


Ekdosis

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Aiónios [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Ancient Greece AU, Blood, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gore, Intimacy, M/M, Nightmares, Oral Sex, Violence, War, adoration, care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 08:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3685692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I was not taught to allow others to fight my battles," Will mumbles, straddling Hannibal as he rolls his shoulders and stretches his arms up and back, muscles pulling and bones clicking into place. "The general that taught me made sure I could hold my own." Will smiles, coy, bends to whisper against Hannibal’s ear, "Perhaps the fat general would have advised otherwise."</i>
</p><p>The fourth year that Hannibal and Will share together. Follows on directly after <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3222968">Epaulia</a>, and it helps a lot if you have read that one first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WendigoDreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WendigoDreaming/gifts).



> Still working from [dweeby's](http://sweeby.tumblr.com/) amazing prompt that started [Ero̱totropía](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2526059) and led to this certainly-not-a-one-shot series. Thank you, bb, it has been - and continues to be - a blast.

Camp wakes early, but Hannibal earlier still.

He shudders, jerking away from the hot tongue against his face, warm breath gusted against him in insistence for attention. A strong body curled tight against his own, limbs intertwined in the narrow cot they share, Hannibal grumbles a curse and nuzzles deeper, seeking what little sleep can be afforded still before he must drag himself out of bed and begin the day.

Yelp licks him more insistently, wheezing pleasure in seeing that Hannibal has stirred, and Hannibal tells him fondly that he is stupid.

But the voices are rising with the sun, countless men beginning the day’s preparations. There are inventories to take and horses to feed, there is armor to be cleaned and for Hannibal and the Spartan strategoi who are here to lead their men, plans to devise.

Hannibal buries his face deeper into Yelp’s fur and smiles when he feels another warm body press against his back.

Will makes a soft sound and burrows against Hannibal as the older man is against the dog before him. He sighs, a sleepy thing and barely voiced, and licks his lips before pressing them to Hannibal’s shoulder.

“This is a sign for me to go,” Will mumbles, resigned and rough-voiced, nuzzling his lips over and over Hannibal’s shoulder before shifting enough to nuzzle behind his ear instead. “Gather what few clothes I came with and return to my own tent and my own stupid dog.”

Yelp slaps his tail against the floor, familiar words taken as praise, as always, and Will reaches to grasp his muzzle and shake it gently before letting him go. He settles heavy on Hannibal, eyes closing again, no desire at all to move from atop his general, even as the camp wakes further. Will doesn’t move when Hannibal finally turns to lie on his back, he merely slips to rest on his chest, instead, curls his fingers in the warm hair there and sighs.

“I’m unused to the noise,” Will admits, splaying his fingers and drawing nails just gently over skin. “The camp is alive with it, like its own ocean.”

Hannibal’s smile widens a little, and he grasps Will’s hair - worn loose in sleep - to bring their mouths together. Intimate and soft, despite the cold dawn air through the tent around them, despite the many hundreds just outside it. Hannibal traces Will’s cheek, growing soft with beard, and brings his thumb across Will’s mouth, eyes hooding as Will chases it with a kiss.

“You know you can stay with me,” Hannibal tells him, not for the first time since they arrived several days before. “No one would argue it, no one would question it. Our relationship is known -”

“And commented on enough already,” Will responds, sprawling to rest his cheek against Hannibal’s warm, furry chest again. “It isn’t a matter of arguing or questioning, but a matter of how they regard me.”

“You think they doubt you.”

“I know they do. I hear it in passing, that I am ‘the general’s wife’ and wondering if I know how to use the axe at my side, or whether I simply think it ‘pretty’,” Will snorts.

“You will show them,” Hannibal assures him.

He spreads his palms against Hannibal’s chest and pushes to sit up, dragging the back of his hand across his eyes with a sleepy smile. “And that is why I must be amongst them. To show them my worth.”

Still, Hannibal’s brows remain knit, a gentle consternation. “If you told me who speaks so ill of you, I would ensure they think twice of doing it again.”

"I was not taught to allow others to fight my battles," Will mumbles, straddling Hannibal as he rolls his shoulders and stretches his arms up and back, muscles pulling and bones clicking into place. "The general that taught me made sure I could hold my own." Will smiles, coy, bends to whisper against Hannibal’s ear, "Perhaps the fat general would have advised otherwise."

He kisses him once before pushing himself to stand, reach for the chiton rumpled on the floor. Will will redo his braid in his own tent, venture out with Snow when the camp has awoken, when men have little more to do than jeer and jest, and learn the strength of another’s resistance to their pushing.

He does not look forward to another day of whistles and jostling, but perhaps if he can get far enough from the camp to throw the axes he could let his mind free for a time, allow himself that grounding and fill his ears with the ocean and horses and dogs, not the soldiers who wait unsure as he does.

"Shall I come to see you?" Hannibal asks, and Will shrugs his shoulders before pinning his tunic in place.

"If the strategoi have time enough to visit mere troops, perhaps." He smiles, no ill will behind the words, and bends to take up his belt up as Yelp steps up for a rub behind the ears. "I shall train, I think, unless we are called upon. You will find me by the trees, east."

“If I did not so entirely adore your self-possession, I would resent it with every fiber of my being,” Hannibal grouses, reaching for Will and just missing him as Will steps aside with a grin. The general tucks his arm beneath his cheek, resting again on his stomach. “I will miss you.”

“Then all the better we have more time apart,” Will teases, “if already you’re so distracted.”

“I am distracted by your absence, not your presence.” Hannibal closes his eyes, settling when Will brushes a kiss over his temple. “Go then. Train well and suffer no fools. And when the day is done return to me and I will ease the aching of your mind and body.”

He does not let the boy part from him without snaring him into another kiss, until with a clever twist along the length of his body, Will breaks free with a grin and tells Yelp to behave, before letting the tent flap flutter shut behind him.

Of all the cruelties of war that Will had anticipated, the endless _waiting_ was not one of them. Everything that must be done, must be done quickly and without waste, but once accomplished, there is little beyond holding for the next command. It makes the men uneasy, to have their hands idle and their fate descending on them, outside of their own control. But with Persia on the approach, and the Spartans - certainly less stoic than Will had anticipated, considering how they in particular chide him - waiting to depart to stop them at the pass, there is nothing to be done about it.

As if it were a living thing, the camp awakens at the bottom of the hill on which the strategoi sleep, with soldiers seeking breakfast or a wash in the river, in anticipation for going to their tasks and stations for the day. Sunlight breaks as if it were a sea urchin, stretching lilac spines across the sky, and a brisk breeze carries the scent of junipers down from the mountains that rise jagged up either direction from their encampment.

Will passes tents and counts until he reaches his own. Within, Snow lies sprawled on the cot, unused by Will and possessed, happily, by his beast. Will smiles, bends to stroke behind the dog's ears, to catch his tail in a soft grip, scratch his stomach until Snow's leg twitches helplessly in doggish joy.

"You will need to find a rabbit again," Will advises, apologetic that the dog now must make his own way, happy, though, that the entire pack had grown to be apt hunters. It hardly matters, here, if the game is devoured before it is returned. "Go."

He sends Snow from the tent with a nudge, and listens as more comments are made about the creature. How only a madman would bring such a beast, how it would eat them all in the night, were it hungry enough. Will’s lips tilt in a smile but it is thin, far from the deep pleasure of his morning grins. It matters little. War will equalize the men, one will strike down an opponent upon the man they had not hours before teased and goaded. It is a camaraderie that Will cannot explain but can sense.

He does his boots up tighter, enough so they sit comfortably against his legs. The morning will bring chores, perhaps, or merely silence until a scuffle breaks out or one man finds another worth coaxing to a battle of wits - though Will finds the commentary far from educated. He supposes he cannot blame them. Most of these men trained from youth to be stealthy and strong, to steal and conceal, to work as a whole, not as an individual. He waits for orders, and when none come, takes his axes in hand, hooks the flap of his tent up to air the space, and strolls towards the copse of trees by the river's edge.

Hannibal watches for Will from the hill, dressed now with his chlamys warp across his shoulders, and sees Snow race from camp, but not the boy, with so many others around. At his side, Yelp huffs some sort of attempt at a bark, and Hannibal hushes him fondly. The dog has drawn no comments beyond occasional questions as to what became of the bitch better known for being at his side, and Hannibal has assured them that despite appearances - which are admittedly grim - this one is just as capable as his mother.

He hopes Will remembered to eat before he went to train, and then forces himself to think no more of the boy for now.

Though Hannibal eats alongside the men, he does not share in common the meal they share - a congealed black stew with hunks of pork, a slurry of blood and salt and vinegar. The Spartans prefer it, for every meal in which they can have it, and Hannibal partakes contentedly of the bread and figs and cheese alongside. There are vastly more Laconians than Athenians, Hannibal’s own band the only sent as reinforcement on land for fear of the Spartans taking offense at the gesture. Most of the Greeks - indeed, most of the men of Athens as a whole - move now with Themistocles’ ships, blocking the straits of Artemisium.

Hannibal’s most faithful came with him, a scant band but ones with whom Hannibal would trust his life - and may need, should Sparta fail to live up to its boasting. It is unlikely, but the Greeks will man the encampment in their absence, and already Hannibal’s skin itches at the thought of it.

He eats, and talks of war and women, everything and nothing, before he makes his way through the camp, towards the inventory underway to oversee it, and casts a passing look towards the small woods in the distance.

Within, there are birds and little else. Too small a copse to house creatures, too close to the camping army to keep them, had it once. It is used mostly for shade, though a portion has begun to be chopped away for firewood, by any soldier who feels the heat of summer is not enough for him, or wishes to cook a fish or rabbit caught in boredom that day. 

Will goes in for practice, a thicker tree towards the water’s edge where he can aim and toss, until his arms grow tired and his mind grows clear. Snow will return, by then, licking blood from his muzzle and grinning in doggish joy, and perhaps the camp will be calm by early evening, or loud enough to mask Will’s absence that is hardly noticed anyway. Then he will return to the hill and to the tent and to the man within it.

“At least the general’s wife knows her place.” The voice Will knows, but not the name, and he barely turns to it before he inevitably continues without prompting. “Get me some firewood, while you’re there, chop it fine and good.”

Will’s lips quirk at that, and he allows a demure look from beneath thick lashes, beneath the curls that escape his braid. “Would you stay to see me chop it?” He asks, sees the way the Spartan’s eyes darken at the thought, the way his smile grows almost feral at the suggestion that he can take something so pretty apart and not find retribution for it. So he follows, as Will knew he would.

“Which?” Will asks, lifting his chin to gesture to the trees, feeling eyes on him as he walks, where his boots end, the tunic hangs low and the skin bare between. “Which tree shall we use?”

The man snorts, a deep sound, and Will turns to watch him point to one, fairly substantial, enough perhaps for one fire but not two, and Will shifts his lips in a bare shrug before nodding.

“Very well.” He lifts his hand, his left, and swings, the axe spinning, curling through, to land precisely at the trees core, buried deep and parallel to it. Had the hit been aimed at a man, it would fell him, bleeding, to the ground, good enough only for a foot to the chest to wedge his axe free. A fatal strike, and well aimed. Will tilts his head to consider the throw, sniffs, and turns to look at the man behind him, brows up, questioning. “It’ll do I suppose.”

The man lingers, a moment more, considers this as a contest of strength, but knows he would pay with his well-being for the taking - his own countrymen in seeing him fall to Athenian perversity, and the general in turn, who would take far more than simply his well-being as retribution.

“Make it quick,” he snaps, and goes.

Hannibal watches the Laconian make his way back from the distant gathering of trees, displeasure in the stomp of his sandals and the knit of his brow, and can’t help but smile. The man is lucky to have returned with all his limbs attached. He turns back to continue up the hill, and comes to a stop as he sees who stands atop it.

“Leonidas.”

The man shows only bare recognition of Hannibal, but a quick glance to the chlamys around his shoulders makes clear Hannibal’s rank. “General.”

“I’m surprised to see you here. It’s quite a long way from Peloponnesus.”

Hannibal has always admired the man, though they have only met once before. His severe rulership over Laconia - despite the constant skirmishes with their neighbors - has seen to it that their military, for being not of substantial size, is of a fearsome countenance with ample skill to reinforce it. He restrains a smile as Leonidas snorts.

“And where I am needed, that is where I will be. Sparta is safe for now but it will not be if the Xerxes’ advance is not routed here. I admit an equal surprise to seeing you here, when we were promised that every man of Attica would be aboard Themistocles’ ships.” A pause, and Hannibal images a bare smile in the king’s eyes. “Would it not have been more comfortable for you to remain in Athens, defending an abandoned city?”

“I was offered the opportunity to defend your tents,” Hannibal remarks, and there is a slight smile now at the quip. “How could I decline?”

Both men regard each other a moment longer before Leonidas steps aside to let Hannibal nearer, past him, if he wishes. “Some men’s legs are steadier on soil not on water. You are not of Athens, though it has taken you in.” Hannibal inclines his head, Leonidas shakes his own, smile small but genuine. “You are a man of worth, general, may you defend our tents as long as it pleases you.”

A laugh then, from them both, a silent understanding as more men join them and the conversation fades to gentle quiet and others take its place. The waiting will not be long, now, everyone is sure, the tension is palpable, it rides on the air as the humidity does and stifles the soldiers, the commanders that wait. They are on a timetable set by another, and one that does not negotiate. They are at the mercy of the gods, with strategy and strength as their weapons.

Will can see them, when he leaves the trees, men gathered to talk on the hill, overlooking their men and the land they are protecting from others. Will does not wave, does not move beyond setting one of his axes over his shoulder and allowing his fingers to just support it, with a counterbalance.

He knows Hannibal can see him, smiles, for what it’s worth, and returns to his tent in silence, without further incident or bother from the Spartans that camp near him.

The runners report no change, and so there is no change from the strategoi, in kind. The meeting is uneasy, less consternation then the anticipation of a horse that senses a storm approaching.

Had they hooves, they would be digging against the soil in readiness.

They eat together, there, as much for the company as to affect the disguise of far deeper conversations than those they truly have, where in truth they are waiting as much as the men on the ground beneath. By the time Hannibal emerges, night has fallen, run through stars bright as glinting arrows in the sky above. Beneath it, as if in mirror, dozens of campfires surrounded by the shadowy forms of hundreds of men, and the laughter of relief and dread that another day has come and gone.

Hannibal lingers for long moments, simply watching the field alive with light, until the flames catch along the shining edge of an axe, slung against a narrow shoulder.

Any of the men near enough to notice as also wise enough to avert their eyes and bite their tongues. Hannibal hardly notices the deferment but in the darkening of Will’s cheeks, against which the general grazes a kiss in welcome.

“Hello, Will.”

“General.”

Will can feel eyes on him, many, soldiers and their commanders alike, and feels his shoulders unfurl to pull straighter, hips cocking to stand comfortably, weapon with him merely as a precaution, in case he needs to educate another man in precisely what his weapon is for. He can see the pride with which Hannibal regards him, and takes calm from that, feels his breathing slow, but his heart speed.

He steps past the man, a gentle brush of his axe against his shoulder and knows he follows without turning to see. Around them, some drink, others continue their dinner or start if they had missed the communal meal, but Will pays them as little mind as they pay him. He walks, straight-backed and strong, towards the tent he knows is Hannibal’s, where he can hear the thumping tail of Yelp where he sits before the large dog leaps to greet him and Will sets his weapon aside so the thing doesn’t hurt himself.

“Silly boy,” he praises. “Silly big boy look at you, huh? Have you been taking care of him?” Yelp wheezes, lips drawn back in a toothy grin, and Will grabs his muzzle to kiss between his eyes. “Go find your brother,” he tells him, repeats the command, says Snow’s name, and the dog is off, loping down the hill and towards Will’s tent. He’ll be back, unable to sleep without Hannibal near him, but for the moment, at least, they are without company.

Will sets his axe just inside the tent, lets his cape drop atop it and grins when he hears the flap whisper closed behind Hannibal as he enters.

“I hope I’m not disturbing,” Hannibal intones, head ducked in playful subservience to the boy who both know hold him entirely in sway.

“Please, general - do come in,” teases Will. He does not yet turn to the man entirely, but simply watches Hannibal approach from across his shoulder and the corner of his eye, crinkled in pleasure.

Hannibal’s own smile curves a little wider, as he steps once, twice closer to the boy who bares his shoulder with a slip of his chiton, the skin wonderfully smooth where it is yet unmarked, pulled taut across the movement of muscles beneath, like shadows under water. “It’s indecorous, to be certain,” Hannibal insists. “Perhaps I should go.”

“Don’t you dare,” Will laughs and Hannibal snares him around the waist before he can fully turn, surrounding him to pull his boy back against him and running a hand back over his hair to loosen his little braid.

“How are the woods? Well-tended, despite your proclivity for destroying them?”

Will hums, brings his hands down to work his belt as well, so that when Hannibal lets him go the fabric of his tunic can slip away unhindered, and all he has to do it step free of it. He leans into the fingers that work gently against his scalp and smiles.

“A Spartan asked me to chop him some wood,” Will says, casual. “The poor man probably never has before, with his calling being in beating and stealing, so I obliged. Taught him how to do it himself. He left educated.”

Will turns in Hannibal’s arms and presses his lips beneath his jaw, sharp and strong, warm with his short beard and pulse beneath.

“How was your meeting?” He asks in return, tone gentled now, lower, eyes half open as he continues his soft kisses against Hannibal’s skin.

“Amenable,” Hannibal replies, as disinterested now as he had been during another meeting of ‘hold and wait’. Far more interesting than that are the heated kisses dragged through the bristles of his beard, the little sigh that breaks from them and threatens a shiver in him despite the warmth outside the tent. He lifts his head to encourage Will lower, and relishes the hum from his rising pulse, allowed only for his boy.

He loosens his arms to allow the soft fabric of Will’s chiton to pool around his feet, and cinches them back just as quickly to heft the little soldier to his toes, dragging him towards the cot, and turning to fall back first with Will atop him.

“Have I told you yet today how glad I am for the choice you made to accompany?” Hannibal asks, shifting up a shoulder to allow Will to unfasten his chiton and bare his chest, all hair and tattoos, marks and scars. For now, he means it, when there is little more to do than wait and appear busier than they are. For now, he revels in his boy’s stubbornness, when it means they can still share their nights and mornings together.

But he realizes, distantly, past the goosebumps that crawl across his skin when Will’s fingernails rake across his skin, that for now means simply that, and how rapidly everything will change.

He wraps his arms around Will’s limber body and pulls him close to lay atop him, nuzzling into the long curls that drape around their faces.

“Just now,” Will replies, amused, and kisses Hannibal until both are breathless, shifting against each other in comfortable, familiar pleasure. Then Will pulls back, enough to pull the tunic from Hannibal, watching him arch as needed to take his weight from it, to allow Will to unclothe him. He lingers, then, working Hannibal’s boots off to allow him to rest comfortably on the cot, and gives him a look of dark, playful pleasure, before ducking his head to take Hannibal into his mouth, working him hard with lips and tongue and fingers curled at the base.

His own boots he keeps on, pressing one toe into the ground to balance himself as he rests his knee on the cot, body stretched atop Hannibal, head ducked between his shoulders and eyes up to watch, up the expanse of the body he knows so well.

He does not regret his decision to come, either, contented with the tedium to practice and train, and return to his general at night, leave him, reluctantly, in the morning.

Hannibal curses softly in Neuri, bending to press himself into Will’s mouth, eyes hooding as his cock awakens in twitches against an eager tongue and clever fingers. He tilts his head just to the side, studying with delight the way Will’s calf curves beneath the high leather boot, toes pushed against the ground and muscles tight up to his backside, the strength in his body visible now, where before - years, now - it was only a promise.

He turns dark eyes back to meet bright blue, smiling softly when he sees Will’s gaze narrow in pleasure at the pale red across Hannibal’s cheeks from the sight of his cock growing hard and slick between Will’s lips. He takes him deep as he can, still unable to take him wholly, but the attempt is enough to elicit a groan that certainly any men near the tent would hear.

Hannibal doesn’t care.

Wrapping Will’s hair around his fingers he tugs the boy upward again, mouths parting against the other, to share the twining of their tongues, the quickened breath that each earns from the other in turn. Broad hands release long curls and skim across pale shoulders, one raised with scars in the shape of a horse, and lower still until he can grasp Will’s backside and touch him there with furtive fingers.

Will gasps against his mouth, a grin wide and pleased, before he bites his lip and leans past Hannibal to reach for the oil they keep in a small jar on the floor. He holds it out for the man to dip his hand into, pleased to allow him the tease of stretching Will himself, to feel the pressure slowly ease as he works him open and Will pants against his shoulder, his neck, a thin sheen of sweat slicking his back and chest as anticipation and pleasure builds.

“You look formidable on that mountain,” Will whispers to him, grinning, kissing softly against Hannibal’s cheek, to his lips and then arching up and away again, setting his knees wide over Hannibal and bending his back. “A terrifying general. Do you know how many Spartans wish to say idiotic cruelties and stop, knowing who you are? Knowing that an Athenian who is not an Athenian, is a man as powerful and skilled as they themselves are.”

Will gasps, grits his teeth and trembles, pressing back against Hannibal’s fingers, rocking himself against them, tensing his muscles over and over. “Men who have, for a lifetime, done this, find a man who is gifted with their skill by the Gods.”

The praise settles well, pride swelling between the man’s ribs, driving his fingers deeper, wider, to feel Will hunch his shoulders and shiver. In truth, for as keenly as Hannibal appreciates the words, he thinks only now of home - how they might be sharing this in bed together, alone but for the dogs they have to shoo from the room, with no more ahead of them but cleaning horse hooves and picking olives, eating and reading and touching each other. Even the ocean seems an acceptable alternative, now, and Hannibal decides that if both somehow survive this, he will swim with Will whenever he goes.

“They will know you,” Hannibal promises, and catches Will’s bottom lip between his own to suck softly before releasing, hand moving faster now against him, curling to rub inside and hear the high, sweet crack of Will’s voice. “Not only for your beauty, though it is unparalleled, but for your wisdom. Your wit. Your skill in all you work at.”

He starts to turn but Will raises shaking hands to press against his chest and hold him on his back, and Hannibal moans low, when Will rocks free of his fingers and reaches back to grasp his cock instead.

“They will know that I have chosen you for far more than this, peacemaker.”

Will grins, pleased, proud, delighted, and shifts back to guide Hannibal in, a slow stretch, familiar and always so good, as he sinks back, unfurls himself from bending over the man to sit astride him instead, thighs shaking and hands curled into fists against his stomach where he can feel Hannibal’s pulse.

Will laughs, a breathless thing, and opens his eyes to regard Hannibal beneath him, lax against the bed, hands up against Will’s thighs to stroke the skin there, worshipful the way his eyes move over Will’s form, taut and straight and beautiful.

He has always looked at him this way, since Will had let him, since Will had come to him on his own and pressed close and shivered as Hannibal had bared him. 

Now he sits confident, adjusts his position enough to take Hannibal deeper and drops his head back with a groan to feel the sensation tremble up his spine. It feels incredible, because it is this man, and no other beneath him, because it is this that they share, together, with no other. Will holds the man in thrall as surely as Hannibal holds Will hypnotized by him. He adores him, loves him, would turn the world upside down for him.

Another groan and Will pushes up on his knees, sinks back down, grinning as he sets his palm against Hannibal’s chest, splays his fingers there and holds him down.

“No,” he sighs, voice rough on the consonants, Neuri pouring from his lips, not Greek. “No, you stay just as you are. Let me ride you.”

The language always stirs something rough and wonderful in the man, reaching to the core of what makes him who he is - deeper than armor or skin, deeper than the ash tattooed inside it. Will has given that to him, one gift of many, but perhaps the most profound. Something he was certain he would never hear again, would have forgotten himself if not by his own resolute stubbornness, and taught now to a boy just as stubborn in his insistence to understand the language that he has made alive again.

It is beautiful, coarse and warm, and Hannibal can do nothing more than obey the only one who speaks to his heart so entirely.

The general lies still, but for the small rolls of his hips that he can’t constrain, hands curved over bony hips not to guide Will’s movement but to simply feel it. One slips, tracing rough knuckles over bare, still-boyish thigh, and he takes Will’s cock in his hand to stroke him in time with Will’s own motions, all heat and movement, astride him. Raw power, newfound and wielded with youthful joy, as Will tightens his body with decisive control, and bites his lip in a grin as Hannibal groans his name.

“A harsher commander than I have ever been,” Hannibal teases him, and the next attempted push to take his boy harder is met with an arched brow, and he stills with a huff of laughter.

Will smiles wider as Hannibal relents, and drops his head back again, lips parted and eyes closed. He rides Hannibal as though wind is screaming past his ears, as energy and blood and heat and pleasure course through him. He twists his hips and turns, arches harder and tenses his muscles, over and over in a maddening pattern Hannibal cannot predict or explain, driving them both to groans and madness.

Will’s voice breaks to a whimper first, high sweet things as Hannibal continues to stroke him, bring him closer and closer to his own pleasure as he holds Hannibal’s captive.

“Fearless,” Hannibal praises him, voice tight, “wild, tempting and infuriating boy.”

Will laughs, breathless and shaking, and on the next bend, presses close to Hannibal again, kissing him, hands against his cheeks, hot from holding his fists clasped before, containing his own pleasure to draw out Hannibal’s.

“Yours,” he whispers, a reminder, a promise, and grins wide when Hannibal takes the word as permission to grasp Will as he chooses and press him where he wants him to be.

Hannibal snares his arm tight around Will’s waist and turns him, suddenly enough to nearly spill them both off the cot and to the ground. Laying heavy against his boy, the lovely breathless creature pinned beneath him, Hannibal rests his arms to either side of Will’s head and kisses him until their chests hurt, hearts hammering like hooves at a gallop, a savage joy in the rutting as he repays Will’s magnificent contortions.

He grins against Will’s lips when they finally part only enough that air can pass between their mouths, back bent and hips curling fast and hard as he wonders at how much his boy can take - does take, _wishes_ to take - for him. Slipping a sweat-slick hand between their jostling bodies, Hannibal takes Will in hand again, and without a mind for who in camp hears the relief afforded to each other, he drives his cock in short, shallow thrusts and sighs against Will’s shoulder.

It isn’t clear who finishes first, the general with a sharp, stabbing thrust or Will who breaks beautifully beneath his touch, but it is as though the camp has been consumed in unearthly flame, blinding white behind their eyes as they rise like ash together, light enough that even breath is too heavy to take.

Will laughs, breathless, and presses a hand to his face, relatively cooler fingers against flushed skin and burning eyelids as Hannibal falls to rest heavy atop him. Will lets his legs slip to the bed properly, one to the floor, still in his boots, and laughing at that, as well, as Hannibal noses against him, kisses his damp skin.

He knows they were heard, knows that silent judgements are made as quickly and as deeply as potential envies, as potential questions and requests. Will groans low, a deep and pleased sound, and ducks his head to breathe in the warm smell of Hannibal against him, close, sleepy, sated. He gasps softly when Hannibal pulls free of him, and smiles when the man looks up to regard him, bringing a hand down to stroke Hannibal’s hair from his face.

“Lucky general Hannibal," Will murmurs, amused, warm. He will sleep, again, until the heavy dog returns to pounce on Hannibal and make himself comfortable against them both. He will sleep until the dawn wakes the camp and the camp wakes them, and then he will reluctantly go, and return the next night, and the next.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We have ourselves to dedicate,” Will considers, “our souls and beings to give them.”
> 
> “I have dedicated you to them many times.”
> 
> “And I you, to them,” Will agrees, “but have we together?”

Will is in the woods again, what is left of them, after a month waiting for decisions, plans, considerations, and Snow lays at his feet, heavy and entirely useless for protection, but welcome company. Will whittles, just little things with the sharp little edge of his axe, patterns in twigs, practicing carving in the stumps of trees left in the wake of another firewood pillage.

Why he does this, he is unsure, but he feels the draw for the tiny folded animals back at home on the farm, the need to give them siblings here, just as crooked and slowly growing in number. So he can bring them home from the war, from the waiting for the war, and unite them for the first time.

It is here that Hannibal finds him, one leg curled beneath him as Will works intricate lines into a knobbed shape in his hands. It is quiet, the sun filtering through the leaves overhead and he can tell Will hears him, but he does not stiffen, does not move at all. Snow’s tail begins to strike the ground in dull thuds again and again, speeding up in his doggish joy to see Hannibal.

Will bends to blow the dust from his work and casually tosses the axe into the stump he’s sitting on, against it, to rest, before rolling his shoulders with a soft groan and turning a smile over his shoulder.

“General.”

“Peacemaker.”

Fighting down a smile, Hannibal crouches. He rubs a hand briskly over Snow’s offered belly and asks him in Neuri if he’s been good today, how fares his siege upon the hapless hares of Greece, whether he’s minded his master whose smile widens in kind at the rough-hewn words his partner speaks.

“You will dull your axe,” Hannibal tells Will, with a nod towards where it’s lodged.

Will stretches, long legs splayed and feet bare against the grass that spills between his toes. “Better it see some use than none at all.”

"Would that you dull it here, then.” With a slight smile, Hannibal stands, grasping at Snow’s snout before he wanders closer to where Will sits. He lifts his eyes to the sun-scattered ceiling of leaves above them, shot through with dark “I’ve not come here before,” he notes, his voice kept soft despite knowing that they are alone. “Have I disturbed you?”

“The company is welcome.” Will tilts his head, sets aside his strangely shaped little creature and regards Hannibal properly instead. Hannibal looks tired, no more or less so than he had that morning when Will had kissed him deep and crawled from his tent to return to his own, still determined to live his life among the soldiers despite their jeers, despite their cruel words and determination to ignore Will for anything more than childish bullying.

“You came in time, there is still some forest left.” He gestures, keeps his smile small, amusement sinking into sadness at the end, just enough to feel. “But you also came at a time when you are usually within a heavy oiled tent discussing frighteningly serious things with desperately powerful men.”

The jest is small but enough to draw a smile, and Will pushes himself to stand, to step closer and press his forehead to the man’s shoulder with a warm sigh.

“Have you decided something?”

Hannibal brings his hand to rest against the back of Will’s neck, beneath the tail now long enough to be braided, wrapped in a cord of leather. He turns his mouth against his temple and closes his eyes. “I am avoiding my tasks,” he admits, with a gentle amusement that does less to warm them than the nearness of the other.

“You’re avoiding the question.”

Hannibal huffs a laugh. They stand in silence a moment more, but for the trembling of the trees as a breeze twines against them. Snow seeks out his brother, no doubt caught wheezing in a shrubbery nearby, and Hannibal watches him go.

“We move at dawn to ready at Thermopylae."

“We?”

“The Laconians,” he corrects. “Xerxes will reach the pass in few days’ time, and find Sparta’s legion awaiting him.”

“And the ships -”

“We’ve sent word to Artemisium. Athens has always prided itself on organization and timing.”

Will smiles at the tone but does not counter the words, just turns his head a little to nuzzle warmly near Hannibal’s neck. The camp will be busy, once the orders are given. Men packing up and preparing, drinking and yelling to both appease the gods and taunt them. Will is glad he spends his nights on the hill and not beneath it, though he is certain the voices will carry.

“May Gods be with them, then,” Will says, pushes back to look up at Hannibal, allow a small smile to tilt his mouth before he tilts his head. “And we Athenians will continue to wait for word to prove our usefulness.”

He bites his lip, takes a breath and releases it, pressing his hand over Hannibal’s heart to feel it beat powerful beneath his chiton and heavy cloak despite the heat. Status weighing heavy, as always.

“And in the meantime,” Will asks, “what does the general want to be doing?”

“In truth?” Hannibal lifts a brow.

“Always,” grins Will.

“In truth, I would like to be home.” Will’s tunic gathers against Hannibal’s fingers as he rubs long, slow lines up and down the boy’s back. A glance behind himself confirms that the stump on which Will sat is still there, and so Hannibal takes that seat now instead, tugging his eromenos-no-more down into his lap. “The olives will be all but throwing themselves from the trees. There will be kids and chicks, kittens and - if the Gods do _not_ look kindly on me - pups. Foals to tend, others to train. Grain to store, to keep the horses fed through winter, food to salt and cure for ourselves.”

Hannibal rests a palm against Will’s thigh, and leans to rest his cheek against his boy’s shoulder. “I would like to watch you at play in the sea again, the hounds calling to you noisy from the shore. I would like to feel the sun dry salt on your skin, and taste its warmth.”

Leaning back, Hannibal lifts his gaze, and in the corners now are not the wrinkles of mirth that once brightened his eyes but deeper lines, etched in exhaustion.

“That is what the general wishes,” sighs Hannibal. “And if the Gods look with favor on us both it will be ours again soon.”

Will sits against him, heavy and close, and draws fingers against the sensitive skin behind his ears, up around them where his hair is pulled back into his own braid, greying and heavy and utterly beautiful to Will. He thinks of the farm, the early mornings and quiet - so much quiet.

"The goats will have chewed through the fence again," he adds, amused, tone just as quiet as Hannibal's own. "Beli will be old enough to train with the rope, stubborn and little and harder to work with than Vih'r was."

He leans in to press his lips to Hannibal's temple, breathe him in and soothe as much as he can the tension in him. The weight of responsibility and power he holds, the heaviness of waiting, waiting, hoping for something to happen and at once dreading what will. Will sighs against his skin and kisses it again, hands down under Hannibal's arms, fingers over his shoulders, holding him close and still and together.

"We would wake late and take breakfast in the kitchen, warm milk and berries and fish. Bread and oil that drips down our fingers. Laugh enough for Asherah to chasten us to stop." Will smiles, though it is in reassurance, in a deep longing for the images his words paint. "The Gods will favor us," he sighs. “There is no reason why they should not."

The impertinence in his voice finally narrows Hannibal’s eyes in a smile, and he tucks it against the curve of Will’s neck. He is hardly a boy anymore - legally, not at all, but scarcely even in form. He sits heavy on Hannibal’s lap, strapping where once he was only a lithe little slip of a thing, but there is a strange comfort in this. Will holds Hannibal with his own strength, now.

He is tall and swift and handsome, and of all the lives he might have lead, he chooses to be here.

And still small enough, by compare, that Hannibal can gather him readily in his arms.

Will lets himself slide closer, and with a breath across his ear, smiles. “Trust,” he tells Hannibal, and the general hums.

“In you, or in the gods?”

“In both.”

“You have all of it.” Hannibal tilts his head to regard the boy whose cheek is so warm against his own. A smile appears, softly. “I have none left to spare. If you speak with them so assuredly, then through your words, they hear my own, do they not?”

“That does not mean you should not speak them yourself.” Will’s smile widens and he rests their foreheads together. “Hedge your bets, and give them no room to doubt your intentions.”

“I’ve no bull to sacrifice, not even a goat. We have Yelp, I suppose...”

The tease earns a laugh and Hannibal kisses the hollow of Will’s throat, to feel that sweet sound move through him, too rarely heard now and all the more precious for it. Will turns his eyes upwards towards the leaves aglow with sun, as if in their fragility they held at bay a fire, and considers their dilemma.

“Then we must make do with offering what we have,” decides Will.

“I imagine Yelp would curry more wrath than favor.”

Will presses his fingers to Hannibal’s lips and kisses them, a tease, gentle, and a request for the man to listen, just for a moment.

“The Gods do not always thirst for blood,” Will reminds him, “and those that do will certainly get their sacrifice. At Thermopylae, at any other battle in our lifetime or another. But those Gods that we seek to appease are satisfied with less visceral things, less crudely showy acts.”

Will taps his fingertips against Hannibal’s lips and grins when the general kisses them, eyes on Will, listening as his boy distracts him, calms him, as he so often does, by doing nothing more than sitting close.

“Who do the Gods look kindly on?” Will asks, removes his fingers and kisses Hannibal softly between each of his answers, feeling them against his skin rather than hearing them.

“Children,” Hannibal sighs, “for their innocence. Women, for their wisdom. Warriors for their strength and dedication.”

Will hums, a longer kiss for the last answer before pulling back. “So we are already favored,” he says, “for our strength and dedication. To their cause, to our own, to each other. Yelp can live to wheeze upon you another morning more, perhaps, if you let him.”

Will laughs, as Hannibal does, and rests his hands against his shoulders again, heavy and comfortable, forehead to Hannibal’s own as he feels the man still not calmed, by gentle words or promises.

“We have ourselves to dedicate,” Will considers, “our souls and beings to give them.”

“I have dedicated you to them many times.”

“And I you, to them,” Will agrees, “but have we together?”

Hannibal thinks on the words, feels that familiar swell of warmth within his chest as Will speaks of his Gods, their Gods, as though all his life he has prayed to them and known them as Hannibal has.

“The difference between a soldier’s own swearing to the Gods, and the blessing of an army as a whole in seeking victory.” The words are carefully chosen, but Will’s reaction does not cool, his brows do not knit nor do lines of worry etch his smooth features. Hannibal kisses him, their lips locked softly together. “The difference,” Hannibal says softly, “between asking favor for one’s self, and the oath that creates a union. A whole, rather than parts.”

Will shifts closer and Hannibal brings his knees up, heels planted in the black soil, to keep him near. There is a new tension now in Hannibal’s shoulders, not the rising drumbeat of war in his pulse, the distant howl of horns from inside his marrow that calls him to a fight. It is a lyre’s strings, gently plucked, yielding music even though uncertainty as to the song’s conclusion softens the song.

“There are rituals,” Hannibal recalls distantly. “When families join, blood and wine spilled to the earth in thanks. A prized horse sent to the Gods, his virility spattered red across a bride’s laughing face from the bough of a needled tree, honey meads shared between mouths. Promises made, not only to the Gods but to the other, sworn on a band of iron that will hold the length of their lives and longer still.”

As if realizing only belatedly that what he says sounds as if it were a suggestion, Hannibal shakes his head, and Will tucks a loosened strand of grey behind the man’s ear. His tone shifts, the wind moving sand over patterns drawn in it, temporary and fleeting, and he allows a smile, good-natured and mild.

“But you are not a bride, nor I. I know what they must say to you in the camp and I would not bring more shame upon you than I already have, peacemaker.”

"There is no shame," Will tells him, "in things I do not find shameful. Their words mean little more than air moved by unthinking mouths."

Brave words, and although Will believes them, entirely, repeats them often and thanks the wise woman who taught them to him, it grows heavy, the weight of those words against him. Day after day of jeering and whispered cruelties to entice a fight and claim none will happen due to sensitive dispositions and the aesthetic distaste for blood.

He sets his hands on either side of Hannibal’s face, strokes soft beneath his eyes as Will holds his gaze and feels it warm as Hannibal's own does. He loves him. Feels his heart beat in time with his like he has felt with no other. He returns to his general every night, fingers snared in his hair, voice proudly pulled free, given to the wind to carry to all those who may wish it silenced. He is not ashamed, he is not regretting, for even a moment, his choice to come here, his choice to stay with Hannibal. 

"That ritual is not for Greeks, it is for us," Will tells him gently, moving to take Hannibal’s hand and lace their fingers together, palm to palm, wrists pressing pulses close. "I am not a bride, but a warrior. And the joining of my blood with yours is honor to the Gods, honor to us, and would be a pleasure, both."

Hannibal brings their hands towards his mouth, lips parting warm against Will’s fingertips. He recalls the boy bent and insolent in the baths, spouting with the sort of certainty that only youth can possess that he would never submit himself to anyone, let alone this general. He recalls months spent in miserable silence, the boy like a shadow - always circling him on the outskirts. He recalls the fear that drove Will to ask when finally they shared a bed, whether Will would hate him for it.

No, Hannibal had told him, and he had not hated him. But neither imagined that lack of hate would turn so quickly to passion, and passion slow its flame to a smolder of something far deeper than either would have ever considered.

“I love you.” Hannibal touches a kiss to Will’s wrist. “And I am certain there could never be another who moves me as you do.”

“Then we will make it known to them,” Will insists softly. “So that they know to never part us.”

“After, Will, when we might find a sacred wood and make our sacrifices.”

“Is this wood not sacred?” Hannibal lifts his eyes to Will as he speaks, resounding wisdom and clarity of heart in his words. “If we swear to each other in it, will that not make it so?”

“There is a ritual -”

“There is an oath.” Will catches Hannibal’s hands in his own as he pulls away, dragging the general to stand with him. “And that is what matters most. You and I together, Hannibal, the rest is merely trappings.”

“Peacemaker, you are mad,” Hannibal laughs, pressing a hand to the side of his face. “Shall I weave you a crown of olive leaves, in place of laurels? Bed you after in the grasses and call you husband?”

"I would wear it proudly," Will declares, smile wide and youthful and giddy. He can see the feeble arguments Hannibal brings, as he had when Will asked him to mark his skin with blade and ash, as he had when Will had offered himself entirely. He knows the fear that cools Hannibal's blood at the thought of driving his boy away, and he knows, too, that little - if anything - could.

"And you may bed me in your tent.” A grin, playful and full of mischief. “And call me any words you can still find, once I drive coherence from you."

Will turns into the hand against his face and presses warm lips to it. He knows Hannibal by heart. The callouses and rough fingers, the gentleness within them, the strength. He can feel the power of the words he wants to say, pressing to his chest and heating his ribs. He can feel the adoration for him that grows and extends and expands beyond them entirely.

He sighs, quiet, and bends to take up his axe from the side of the stump, a jerk to work it free. It is still sharp, despite the use it has seen in innocent whittling, and entirely beautiful. A weapon of exceptional balance, power, strength and grace. He lifts his eyes to Hannibal, waits to see if the man’s hesitation is genuine or merely held back by his own unfounded worries about Will’s want for it.

He wants it.

He wants him.

Hannibal, who wields weapons as though they are extensions of his own body, nearly fumbles in taking the axe with Will. A sigh of laughter, wonderfully nervous despite his desire for this, and around the sharp-honed blade Hannibal laces his fingers carefully with Will’s and presses them close. Enough to feel the edge of it, not tight enough to cut, but to know its firmness against their skin, a physical sensation that mirrors the certainty they both feel.

“It will do.” He tilts his head, studies their hands together, and slips an arm over Will’s shoulder to pull him near and sigh against his temple. Hannibal does not know the words to say that could possibly express what Will means to him, how all the world has changed in knowing him so dearly and become again a place of warmth and comfort rather than war and misplacement. His heart hammers against his ribs and he lets it run free, quickening for Will alone.

For this.

“Before the gods of this place and all others, my ancestors and yours, I swear myself to you.” Hannibal swallows hard, his voice so soft, cracking like flame, that it can hardly be heard but that he whispers his words against Will’s ear and hopes that they are heard by any who would look on this with blessing. “I am yours. I have been, always, before I knew you, and will be long after we have passed to other worlds. I will stay at your side above all others. I will fight for you and defend you. I will keep you warm at night and fed in day. My actions will be, always, with you in mind and heart. I will care for you and keep you in this life, and any others. I will love you always, peacemaker, who has brought quiet to my spirit too long in turmoil.”

Hannibal tilts his head, enough that his lips brush Will’s cheek and the boy can feel the shudder of his breath, trembling gentle as the wind in the trees around them. “Before the gods I swear it. Let them hear and know the wholeness of us.”

Will’s eyes close, heart beating thick in his ears and lips parting on a smile he almost cannot contain. The words sear to his skin, heat and promise, and he feels his throat tighten before he can even speak. Their fingers still hold to the blade of his axe, poised and gentle, laced together as they are pressed together, body and soul.

"Before the gods, of here and now, and past and future, who listen still despite their silence, I swear myself to you," Will replies, voice just as soft and just as trembling as Hannibal's. He bites his lip as Hannibal kisses against his skin, a deep, adoring thing. "My soul had wandered long, and found you, stubborn and angry at being reminded of what it once had, terrified it would not have you again. I will not leave your side, no war and no words could make me. I will greet every morning with you, and hold you through the nights bad dreams will find you. I will protect and guide you, as you have guided me, honor you with all I do and never bring you harm. I will always love you, general, who has reminded my heart how to beat in time with yours, again."

Will turns, now, a soft kiss to the warm beard against Hannibal’s jaw, and both squeeze their fingers together, hard enough for the sharp blade to pierce skin, blood mingling as it slides against their joined hands, drips combined to the ground between their feet. Will laughs, a helpless, delighted thing, and turns to Hannibal properly, eyes bright and smile wide, heart beating so quickly in his chest he can barely breathe for it.

"I love you," he tells him, lips parting just against Hannibal’s, sharing air, before Will tilts his chin up and kisses Hannibal deeply, tongues soft and lips pressed together as they continue to bleed for the gods above them, for each other, here.

With a laugh, Hannibal breaks the kiss, brows pressed together, noses brushing. The axe thuds against the earth when Hannibal takes Will’s hand. Slender fingers, stained dark, are pressed to his chest to feel the galloping of his heart and with his other arm, Hannibal scoops Will beneath his thighs. He will hold him, now and always, whether they are so close as this or far apart - unseparated no matter what distance lies between them. Their mouths meet again, spreading slow together, and the shared blood between them darkens Hannibal’s military shawl, as though his heart itself issues forth to mark this moment in permanence.

Their hands, too, will wear the reminder of their union. Thin white lines, mirrored palm to palm. Hannibal sighs, and memorizes the hearthfire warmth in Will’s eyes. They are home now, no matter where they are.

“We are wedded.” The words are said with disbelief and another rumbling laugh. “Athens told me I may not take a wife - she said nothing of a husband.”

“It is often things unsaid that hold the most significance,” Will says, smiling just as wide, holding just as giddy to his general before kissing him again. Wedded, as he had never wanted to be, and to a man he had once dismissed as savage and unworthy. “I should send a missive to my father, tell him of the news.”

There is a moment when he considers, genuinely considers, and then the narration of the letter in his minds drives a laugh from him, helpless and young, and he wraps his arms around Hannibal to hold to him and giggle at the thought that he had entirely fulfilled his father’s every wish for him, but none of them had turned out at all how his father had wanted.

“We act as children,” Hannibal mumbles against Will’s chest, and the boy just holds him closer, careful to keep his bleeding hand from the man’s hair, turning to nuzzle him.

“I feel entirely alive,” he admits. And for a moment, just a moment here, together, they make home come to them.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will shifts his legs gently wider where Hannibal holds him, wraps his arms around him upside down and rests his cheek against his back.
> 
> “Kidnap me and never give me back,” he tells him.
> 
> “Spoken just like Helen, pulled from her Spartan life of rancid soups and rattling swords.”

Hannibal rises earlier than dawn, though not before his bed is emptied.

He listens to the caress of linen over Will’s skin. Though the tent is too dark to see, he imagines the white fabric draping over lean muscle and soft skin, cascading down sharp bones and brushing over thighs that Hannibal has shown his affection against more times than he can recall. Padded feet join his boy, scuffling through the dust, and the general hides a smile as Will tells Yelp to hush when he wheezes, eager for breakfast.

The fold of the tent slips heavy back into place, and Hannibal counts in Neuri, then in Greek, then in the bit of Phoenician that Asherah taught him to give Will time, before Hannibal rises. He knows he will return to his tent, feed the dogs from rations palmed away at dinner, lay for a little while - sleep, Hannibal hopes - and then be up again in too short a time to join the rest of the soldiers at the endless work maintaining a camp presents.

So when Hannibal goes, this time, it is yet dark. He wanted to imagine that perhaps he would be the first awake, to walk between tents filled with sleeping bodies, savoring a rare silence afforded in this place. But the camp never sleeps, and he is greeted familiarly by men he knows, less so by those he does not, but still afforded respect for the mark of station slung warm across his shoulders.

He walks to the paddock, where hundreds of horses are gathered in wait, and measures Will’s arrival by the lightening of the sky.

He hears the boy whistle before he sees him, and from the many hundreds of hooves and heads comes a stocky little horse towards her call, just as proud - if not more so - than all the others around her.

She’s smaller, and yet already several horses keep their distance, give her space, as she kicks at the ground and snorts. Hannibal cannot help but smile. Just like her boy, carving a place for herself amongst those that are just like her and just unlike. Hannibal watches as Will makes his way up towards them both, barefoot and in one of his softer, older tunics that is - again - almost too short as Will’s grown in their weeks here.

His hands are up in his hair, working the braid back from his face, and between his teeth is an apple, fought for, traded for, negotiated over, Hannibal knows, and Will is carrying it as a shewolf might meat for her cubs, to his horse.

Will stops, laughs when he sees them both and takes the apple from his mouth without taking a bite, walking closer and pushing up on his toes in the soft grass.

“I didn’t bring one for you,” he says, biting his lip with a smile, and moving just past Hannibal, for now, coy, to feed the hard-won treat to Vih’r.

He is caught by the wrist, a swift movement, and entirely gentle. Hannibal reels the boy back to him, eyes narrowing when Will holds the apple at arm’s length.

“I missed you.”

“I’ve only just left you,” Will teases.

“And already my heart aches.” Hannibal wraps an arm around the boy’s waist, bending him back just lightly.

“And something else, I’m sure.”

“You misjudge my intentions,” sighs Hannibal, feigning oppression before he ducks his head and seals his lips against Will’s. Juice still clings to his mouth, tart and sweet all at once, and Hannibal kisses him until he can taste the apple no more. Dark eyes take in Will’s face, as though it has been years since they’ve seen each other, and he needs to memorize him anew. Finally his gaze lingers on Will’s hair, and the general quickly trains down a grin. “May I braid it for you? While you feed her. She grows impatient in waiting, and I cannot say I am not sympathetic.”

Will’s smile is wide and he nods, just once, before leaning in for another kiss, little and light, and nuzzling his nose alongside Hannibal’s.

He speaks to Vih’r in Neuri, tells her she’s being very brave in her boredom, that she and he will both feel the wind cradle them again, like a long-left lover, when they have the time again, when they have the chance. The little horse rubs her head against him, snorts and pushes her soft nose into his hand that still smells like apples even when she has eaten his only one.

Will scratches behind her ears and tells her she is his beautiful girl, that she is the most stubborn in this army, asks her how many stallions she has bitten when they had come too close. He almost shivers when Hannibal’s hands move through his hair, massaging and touching and so gentle, working free the braid Will had done himself to do another, neater, with his own practiced hands.

“Would that we had a day,” Will murmurs, Neuri curling soft around them, though no one is there to hear, let alone understand. “Just one day, again, for us.”

For such large hands, calloused from work and scarred from war, Hannibal is precise in his movement, sweeping each gathered lock straight before twining it to the others. He has, many times, imagined having sons and daughters, long-haired and wild-eyed little things to run across a homestead, and when the boys’ hair was long enough, he would braid it, just like this. They would speak to him in their peoples’ tongue, about everything and nothing, and he would watch them grow up strong. In a strange way, the thought doesn’t hurt the way it would before, in wanting what he could never have.

Hannibal supposes that’s because he has it, now, and so much more.

Lacing the strip of leather together to hold his hair bound, Hannibal knots it once and spans a hand down Will’s back to lay it flat, watching with resounding pleasure as tiny curls spring free again anyway.

“What would you do, if we had that day?” He asks, leaving his hand just there, between Will’s shoulders.

Will hums, arches his back enough for the shoulder blades to present stark against skin and lets out a breath as he releases the tension there.

“We would ride,” he says, “far as the horses could carry us before they tired. They need to stretch their legs, and breathe the proper air again. Not… this.” Will gestures, and the words are only a little sad. Vih’r snorts again and Will rubs down her long nose with a smile, up to scratch between her ears again before clicking his tongue to let her go as she pleases. He leans back further into the hand supporting him and smiles.

“We would eat,” he continues, “soft goat cheese and bread that breaks in our hands, so fresh still from being baked that morning. Sweet oil and figs and berries, lamb and herbs and coarse salt. Cups of milk, still warm.”

He thinks of the farm, the early mornings where they had this, every day, and how he had grown to love it all, how it had become entirely associated with home, his home, theirs.

“We would sleep,” he sighs, “in the long grass, wrapped together with silence around us so heavy we would be cloaked in it.”

“The noise here is constant,” Hannibal agrees. “An endless din of voices and work. I miss the quiet, those moments when the wind would still and for a breath not even the animals would move, and it felt as though the world simply stopped in all its movements.”

Without mind for anyone who might see them, and less mind even still for those who would have something to say about it, Hannibal slips his arms around Will’s waist and brings the boy back against his chest. Soft kisses touch the little slips of hair that have freed themselves from his braid, and his hands rub slow against Will’s stomach. Hannibal can taste the fresh figs, snapping juicy between his teeth. He can taste the pressed olive oil on Will’s fingers, when he would hold them out for Hannibal’s attention with a wry smile. Wine, consumed as much from the other’s mouth as from any cup, until their bodies were red with it and with lingering kisses, they would clean it from each other’s skin.

The thoughts are scattered, like autumn leaves, crumbling, and Hannibal swallows.

“Go and work,” Hannibal tells him, words rough and gentle as a cat’s tongue when he murmurs against Will’s ear. “Unless you wish to come with me instead. I might have word with your quartermaster -”

Will hums, smile wide, and thinks of how young, how silly it would be to forgo his chores, his work for just one day and spend it with Hannibal. Even without the empty fields, without their imagined feast.

“I would follow anywhere you would lead me, general,” Will tells him, tone low, shifting against Hannibal just enough to tease and remind. Will lifts his eyes up, his chin up, from beneath his hair he smiles at the man he would happily give his life for, since he has given it to him already.

Rough hands stroke softly down Will’s bare arms, and up again to feel him shiver. He turns Will to face him, leaning into the boy until his back is to the fence, one hand to either side of him to savor the long kiss between them.

“Would that I might have you with me every moment of every day, waking or sleeping,” Hannibal sighs, ducking his head to nuzzle Will’s cheek aside, and grace him with kisses. “But I am not so unkind to force the tedium of my meetings on you, peacemaker, much as your voice and presence in my lap would be a welcome change.”

Will’s smile dims, just a little, before he closes his eyes and touches a kiss to Hannibal’s beard. “Then lead me to my work, and I will do it with thoughts of you.”

And so they walk together. In opposition to every other time Will makes his way through the camp, there are no mutterings to surround him now, no jeers or catcalls inviting him to the soldiers’ tents. They greet him with as much respect as they greet the general himself, parting to allow them passage.

Hannibal can remember, so long ago, when he first joined the army. The snorts of _metic_ and _barbarian_ followed him everywhere - he was unwelcome at any table, mistrusted to share a tent with, despite the renown of his owner. A jumped-up slave, and little more.

Until he fought, seemingly swallowed into a mist of bone and blood until no more soldiers would come near him, and even then, pursuant, until he could no longer lift his spear. Another soldier - brother, now - carried it back for him that night. And so it may be with Will, Hannibal hopes, and the thought gives him little comfort.

“Go,” he murmurs against Will’s hair, tucking a kiss against his temple, and whispering there. “I love you.”

Will grasps gently against Hannibal’s cape and tugs, like a small child would for attention, whispers the same words back in Neuri, before pushing away from his general to make his way back to his tent, another shrill whistle to bring Snow to his side, burying his hand in the dog’s fur and walking with him further into the camp.

Work Will can always engross himself in, mind numbing as it did back on the farm when he mucked stalls, or helped fix the fences, or climbed the high ladder to the roof to check for leaks and close those up. Hauling food here, it no different, preparing food not so much a chore as a way to quiet the whispers around him, now that Hannibal is gone.

He wonders if they wish to push him far enough for action, far enough that they can tease him, later, that he needs a man to fight his battles, when he cannot do it himself.

He can do it himself.

He will as he has for weeks now. Alone during the day, his dogs coming and going, and in the warm and comfortable and familiar arms of Hannibal at night.

Alone is how he has been most of his life, alone he understands.

Breakfast has ended, bowls cleared away, and little enough remnants left on them to be saved for cobbling into future meals. No sooner does that work end than the preparations for dinner begin, and Will’s mind wanders to the farm once more, and the days he would spend with Asherah there, when Hannibal preferred to be outside.

His name is called, a sharp enough bark that he knows he missed it at least twice before, and he turns from peeling onions towards the source of it. A boy maybe even younger than himself, one of the messengers who ferries orders around the expansive camp and all its various offshoots.

Will wipes the back of his hand along his eye to soak up a tear. “Yes?”

“You’re needed.”

“I’m in the kitchen today.”

“And now you’re needed in the livery, the tackmaster has asked for you.”

“But -”

The look the boy shoots Will is enough, and so he goes with apologies to those around him. Wiping his hands against his tunic he trudges through mud and between tents, past the armorsmiths and towards the paddock again, but not so near to it. The tackmaster is taking inventory, and doesn’t raise his eyes when Will greets him, thin body bent over a long scroll.

“You asked for me?”

“To pass a message,” he sighs.

And so Will is sent, again and again, five times over from one end of the sprawling camp to the other. It is a mistake, it is wrong, and it is a wasteful use of time. It’s a miracle, considering the difficulty in passing a simple command along, that an army might ever mobilize at all from where they’re stuck in the mud. By the time he reaches the tall stacks of firewood, despite there being no one there for him to meet and their location far on the outskirts of camp, he is tired, sweaty and mud-caked and livid.

“I’ll kill you if you touch me,” he snarls, for there could be no other reason to turn him around so much and bring him here alone. “Ask Anakletos - or Helos - what will happen if you do.”

“What will happen if I do?” Hannibal’s voice, wrought with amusement. “I had intended for us to steal away, both horses here, food from the generals’ stores rather than the rations. But I had also intended to, perhaps, touch you, and so I’m curious to know my fate when I am unable to resist.”

Will blinks, eyes wide and shakes his head with a laugh, a hand up against his face as his jaw works and he allows his mind to settle. Legs aching and head filled with too many possibilities and anger slowly fading to a straight slight sort of guilt. He swallows, drops his hand and gives Hannibal an apologetic smile.

“It is rare that long errands end with you,” he explains, but his expression has softened, he steps closer, setting one hand behind his back, then the other, fingers lacing together there as he takes another step, another.

“Helos has a scar along his arm that he claims he got when he slid down the rise in the rain, when his own sword turned against him.”

Will licks his lips and swallows, eyes up, head tilting. “Untrue.”

Hannibal’s lips work and he allows, giving Will his space for the moment. He does not move to touch him yet. “And Anakletos?”

Will frowns, as though considering, and takes the half step needed to be toe to toe with his general. His eyes lift to the sky and turns away as his smile widens, and he says nothing at all.

“It seemed unusual for a horse-riding injury,” Hannibal allows, snaring Will by the cord around his waist to bring him near. He sets his back against the stacked kindling and smiles when the boy leans against his chest. Gentle fingers tuck a loose curl of hair behind his ear, and then run beneath Will’s chin to tilt it towards him. “It is a relief to know that you can defend yourself,” he sighs, “and a worry that you must. I will speak to their commanders -”

“You needn’t,” Will insists, tucking a kiss and a smile against Hannibal’s jaw. “They have learned.”

“Peacemaker indeed.”

Hannibal whistles, a sharp sound that brings his horse clopping out of the woods where she wandered, saddled already. Vih’r follows in kind, and when near enough, Hannibal hoists Will atop her by his waist. Sly, he teases a hand up Will’s chiton to steal a kiss against his leg, before moving to his own horse and mounting. She carries a few small bags against the saddle, and now the general himself, always seeming too large for his little horses, but she carries his weight as if she carried none at all as he turns to guide her towards the woods again.

They ride through the thicket of trees, shadowed cool from the midday sun, a slow pace to allow for unexpected dips in the earth or risen roots over which the horse’s hooves might catch. And when they clear the other side of the line of trees, it is quiet, the din of the camp muffled to silence, only they and the wide fields of the country.

“Go,” Hannibal tells him, and his eyes narrow.

Will drops his head back with a laugh, little and pleased, before he takes a breath and closes his eyes and presses his thighs around Vih’r, and she snorts before setting her feet and going from walking to canter seemingly immediately, pulling another laugh from Will and a whoop of joy as he leans closer to her neck and lets her run.

He can hear Hannibal behind him, his own horse gaining ground to catch up and whispers for Vih’r to run faster, to chase the wind and outrun it.

He can feel his muscles relax from their perpetual tension that the camp brings him, he can feel his lungs fill with clean, cool air as he closes his eyes and just lets his horse guide herself, trusting in her to take them safe wherever her legs will carry her.

He does not know how long they ride before he sits up, Vih’r snorting and slowing to a trot, before Will turns to see Hannibal close behind him, reaches out his hand with fingers splayed for the man to take as he rides closer.

The general skims a hand across his hair, fallen loose as much as Will’s now from the long, loping run, and then snares Will’s when he’s near enough to take it. Their horses settle into step together, matched in synchronicity like the hearts of the two men astride them who lace their fingers together and lean between, kissing sweet and brief and breathless. They could ride forever, and to Hannibal’s shame, he considers it. Though the dogs would remain, he and Will might escape, however briefly, the impending fate that even now marches towards them, whatever it might be. They could return to the farm, their home, the soft bed made softer when they are wrapped together in it, to Asherah and the others and all that they’ve left behind.

If Will asked him, he would consider it.

Replacing one desertion with another.

Although, Hannibal reminds himself, were his pride and honor to even allow it, this new abandonment would see him hung for his actions. It’s a fate more certain than whatever comes their way, and so he lets the thought pass in favor of seeing no further than now. Right now. His leg bumping Will’s as they ride alongside, their hands clasped palm to palm, his boy beside him, as resplendent in his manhood as he was in his youth, made glorious not only by age but by the beauty of his character.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him, apropos of nothing but his own thoughts, and the sunlit warmth in Will’s cheeks is enough that he imagines, for now, that they are home again. His tone gentles, a little mischievous. “Find a place for us to rest and eat. No one will miss us when they do not know the whole of where we’ve gone.”

Will grins, brings Hannibal’s hand to his lips to kiss his knuckles before directing Vih’r to the left, guiding Hannibal with him. There are no trees to hide beneath, but they are not hiding. The grass is tall enough in some places that it brushes Will’s feet, in others flattened or just shorter. He imagines how Vih’r will roll her fill, kicking and rubbing in the warm grass, the earth beneath, so he lets her choose the place, and only then dismounts.

“Go,” he tells her, freeing her from the saddle, rubbing her nose and setting her to go as he holds the bridle in his hands. When he turns to Hannibal it is with a grin, youthful and mischievous. He can feel his heart beat quick as it always did when he knew Hannibal had had enough of their lessons, when he was tired from training. The same feeling Will had had going into the study and pulling Hannibal from his brothers, to allow himself to be pushed up against the wall of the hallway and taken.

He thinks that he will never love another person as he loves Hannibal, and he could not be more contented with the knowledge.

He reaches to help him unsaddle his horse, take the food and wine down from the saddle and set it to the ground. He waits only long enough for Hannibal to part with the creature before pressing himself against his back with a sigh.

“I am sorry for the doubt,” he says.

Hannibal turns a little, to try and see Will over his shoulder, smiling slightly. He reaches back instead then, to gather thin arms around himself, his thumbs brushing the boy’s fine-boned wrists. “Do not be,” the general tells him. “I am sorry for making you afraid. I did not want to draw more attention you than I already have, by simply stealing you away in broad daylight.”

His smile widens when he hears a little laugh snort against his back. “Would you have?”

“Certainly, as Paris did Helen, and you would have come just as willingly as she,” Hannibal tells him. “And you, a far more beautiful prize, in the end.”

“You’ve never seen her, she’s long dead,” Will reminds him, and Hannibal hums.

“Then you are certainly more beautiful than she.” Swiftly, the man turns and snares Will up by the waist, hoisting him over his shoulder and carrying him to where they’ve set the bags.

A shriek of laughter and Will rests obedient against Hannibal’s back, lifting his feet, bending his knees, wriggling up against him. He thinks, for a moment, of how it would have been had Hannibal courted him properly, when he had come to collect him as his eromenos. He wonders what gifts he would have been given, what beautiful things to tempt his favor. He wonders if he would have ever stumbled upon the man on his doorstep, sleeping there in wait for an answer.

The thought warms him, warms his cheeks, and Will laughs, thinking of how long it had taken the two of them to even grow close, to get over the stubbornness both possessed against the societal requirements of them. Against each other.

Will shifts his legs gently wider where Hannibal holds him, wraps his arms around him upside down and rests his cheek against his back.

“Kidnap me and never give me back,” he tells him.

“Spoken just like Helen, pulled from her Spartan life of rancid soups and rattling swords.” Hannibal doesn’t need to see Will to know that he’s grinning, he feels it in the arms that tight around his middle, in the warm nuzzle against the small of his back. He holds his boy just so a moment more, pleased by his weight and lightness both, thin arms and strong legs, and the knowledge that even if he were not truly, staggeringly beautiful, his mind and heart would be more than enough to make him so again.

Slowly he lowers Will, down towards his feet but not yet letting him touch. He keeps an arm around Will’s thighs, the other circling his back, and kisses him.

“Never,” Hannibal promises, in rough Neuri. “Not if every nation’s army came upon our door. I would fight them off, every one, to keep you mine.”

Will sets his hands against Hannibal’s face and kisses him, knowing it is true, delighted that it is.

When he is set down, Will bends to see what they have to eat, careful to set it out for them, since Hannibal had done so much to give them this freedom, this time together in silence, in peace, together. They have bread and cheese, as Will had imagined, figs and apples, warm wine in a skin, a small bottle of oil that Will regards with narrowed eyes and a lip between his teeth before he hides it away, further back against the bags.

He grins when he is snared around the waist again and pulled back against Hannibal’s chest. He wriggles, turns, so he can straddle him instead, and reaches for the bread to break it for them, to feed Hannibal the first piece of it.

“You’ve stolen us a feast, general,” Will laughs. “You spoil me.”

“I’ve stolen nothing,” he protests, lips wrapping around Will’s fingers to take the bread, and pleasure bringing his eyes closed. “It is my own portion. More than one day’s worth, but still my own.”

“What will you eat tomorrow?”

Hannibal opens one eye, just a little, to watch as Will folds a piece of bread against his tongue, cheeks warm with childish delight. “I will think on this, and be satisfied.”

Grinning, Will sets the loaf onto his lap and reaches for a fig, again offering it to Hannibal first. “You feed me poetry, as well.”

“If I do not, then who will? It will not do for you to forget you own cleverness, replaced by bawdy jokes and whorehouse stories. Just as it will not do for you to live only on the rations provided your company,” Hannibal murmurs. “Would that you would come and eat with me. Would that you might without it causing you more strife than I have already.”

He takes the fig between his teeth, humming when the skin snaps and juice spills over his tongue, sluicing down his throat and swelling over his lips. Hannibal starts to lift a hand but finds himself kissed instead, and though the fig is older than one they might have plucked while wandering their own farm, it has been too long since Hannibal has tasted one so sweet.

Will kisses the drops of juice away, up to his lips and pulls away only enough for Hannibal to chew unhindered. Will sets the other half of the fruit between his teeth and savors the juice with a gentle suck against it.

“Some stories make me wonder how true they are.” Hannibal hums, amused, eyes narrowed, and Will lets out a sigh of breath with a grin. “I’ve never been. Perhaps they are true.”

“Which catch your doubt, peacemaker?”

Will considers, laughs when he realizes that he’s blushing, that to him all the stories sound ridiculous, unbelievable, almost frightening sometimes. He feels incredibly young, right then, entirely inexperienced and naive. He thinks, for the first time in many months, of Berenike, of her grace and her carriage, of how entirely different she sounds from the women in these stories.

“Are there truly so many rooms? Filled, as they would have me believe, with soft skin and wide eyes? Do so many men so -” Will bites his lip, shakes his head, laughs nervously. “- so publicly enjoy themselves?”

He picks at the bread himself, eyes down and cheeks reddening, as he thinks how he enjoys Hannibal in their room, in their tent but never in public. It does not belong to them, their closeness. Why should they see?

Hannibal recalls the prostitution houses only distantly now. Another life, long ago, and one in which he was happy enough but not nearly so much as now. He leaves the bread to Will, but gathers up the little cloth that holds the cheese, a handful of olives with it. One is fed to Will, the other to himself, and he turns the pit of the fruit between his teeth in thought.

“Some are very large, bigger than any but the grandest houses. Others are only a few rooms, and of those, perhaps only one where you might remain unseen by your cohorts. The larger the place, the more expensive. The more expensive, the more likely the one with whom you spend your time and money will be welcoming to you, rather than there by force. That is not to say you cannot find a kinship with those who have had little choice in the matter.”

He removes the pit with careful fingers, and sets it against the soil, pushing it in with a thumb. 

“We all do what we must, in places that are unwelcoming to us,” Hannibal says, turning a slight smile up towards Will. “I was not fond of making use of the open rooms. My scars drew enough comment without being so displayed.”

He goes curiously distant, in speaking, soft words and shaded eyes. His words pull quiet, held on a breath as if considering whether or not to say more. He seems to decide against it, ever stoic, and offers a pinch of cheese to Will.

Will sucks it from his fingers but his eyes don’t leave Hannibal’s, even when the man does not look on him. He is lost, somewhere, in a memory Will is not privy to, does not belong in, and yet something pulls at him, entirely, to find out what it is. He considers, wonders if it would be seen as rude to ask, or if, perhaps, Hannibal has so long held it inside that it curls around his bones and hurts him.

He kisses the fingertips that brush his lips and pulls another piece of bread, soft, between his fingers to eat with the cheese.

“Do men see the same women?” He asks, curious. “Or do they enjoy the diversity before they are tethered by married life?”

“That rarely tethers them,” Hannibal comments and Will snorts a laugh, shakes his head, an amused agreement.

“Did you see many?”

Hannibal tilts his head as if to shake it, smile pulling a little wider, a little more pain in the pull, and never quite completes the denial. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“That,” Hannibal responds, looking up at the boy seated heavy in his lap. “You know when to ask, and not just that, but what.” Will draws a breath, but Hannibal has never been one to unravel mysteries so entirely that they become mundane, and only then does he shake his head.

“I have seen many,” he answers. “For a time, after Marathon, I was pleased to be seen at all, and to see in turn, and so it did not matter who I looked on or who looked on me. Women, only, I never went to the other side of the house -”

“Where they keep the boys,” Will adds, and Hannibal nods. They share a quiet moment, no sound around them but the buzz of insects and the settling of grass after a breeze bends it.

“There was a woman.” Hannibal’s voice is soft, as if speaking from very far away. “I was very fond of her.”

Will holds his breath a moment, swallows. The pain he feels from Hannibal is like a fog, cloying around his head as a headache might. This hurts him like an old bruise, pressing a reminder of the pain but no longer as sharp as it had been, once. Will does not ask, he just sets a hand against Hannibal’s chest and gently curls it, bends forward until Hannibal lays back, and puts the food to the side, for the moment.

Skinny arms fold over Hannibal’s chest and Will’s chin rests atop as he waits, watches Hannibal’s eyes seek above him into the grass, back to Will with a blink, a smile.

“Was she scared of you at first?” Will asks, and Hannibal shakes his head with a gently bitten lip.

“No, she was the only to approach me on her own, tug my braid and tilt her head for me to follow.”

Will allows a little laugh at this, and it eases Hannibal’s smile to hear it, eyes softening at the sound. “There is a theme, here, I’m sure.”

“I imagine there is,” the general admits, sighing. “She was Egyptian, and her Greek sparing, but enough that with gesture, we learned to communicate.”

“You saw her often.”

“After the first time she took me to her bed and bade me lay still, and I felt the earth move beneath me from her movements alone, I could not help myself.” Hannibal lifts a hand over his face, rubs his eyes and then lets his arm rest across them to block the sun. “It did not take long after for payment to seem an afterthought - a gesture of care, rather than commerce. She was kind to me. She did not cringe or only tolerate. Her eyes shone bright as temple torches when I would come to see her.”

His breath raises Will up, and sighing, lowers him again.

“Many nights we simply lay together, speaking broken languages. Laughter was a luxury that we savored more than wine - two outsiders whose days held little promise but for our nights…”

Hannibal’s voice catches. Once. Just a missed step, off-beat, the snare of a hoof-tip against a stone. He goes starkly quiet, until he’s certain that the moment has passed, jaw working to ease the ache that presses up hot behind his eyes.

“It was inevitable. An unavoidable condition and an equally unavoidable fate that came because of it. I had no way to know if it was mine. No way to reach her. They would not tell me where she went, it is not men’s business to know. Customers, only.”

His tongue parts his lips, suddenly dry, hurting in that way that old wounds pull sometimes in memory, more than injury. “I would have taken her from there, with the child, no matter how it would shame us both. I tell myself, damn the dishonor of it all, it matters not even if it were not my own, for it would soon be, in heart at least. I tell myself that now and wonder why I did not, as soon as I knew her.”

Will listens, considers this beautiful man before him who suffers so much for the love of those he cannot have, or who cannot have him. Will thinks of the day he had to return home, thinks of how Hannibal had systematically undone himself, worked free - or tried to sever - the bonds he had woven so closely with Will.

Will pushes himself a little closer and kisses beneath the man’s jaw, feels his pulse shudder from the touch, his throat work in a thick swallow that Will knows does not alleviate at all the lump in it.

“You did right by her,” Will tells him, soft. “You were kind. You cared. You did not treat her as how she felt everyone else would.” Will sits up a little to regard Hannibal beneath him. “That is what she remembers of you, I know it.”

Hannibal lifts his hands, skimming them warmly over Will’s hair. Careful fingers loosen the braid he tied earlier that day, and work free each tress until they fall twisting around his face, lit like polished wood from the sun behind. Gently, Hannibal brings the boy near enough to kiss, just touching, little things to remind himself that for all he has lost, he has this.

They have this.

“Look at me,” the general murmurs. “A cloud across the sun, casting shadows.”

“Look at you,” Will answers, smiling softly down at him. “As gentle as you are fierce.”

Hannibal hides a smile against Will’s wrist, bringing it to his lips, kissing his pulse, his palm, his fingertips, before gathering the boy against him. “And lucky, in truth, in spite of it all. Blessed in what way matters most, that a stubborn boy, strong of heart and spirit, should find himself enamored with a fat general.”

Will’s smile almost hurts him it’s so wide.

He wonders, truly, which gods saw fit to allow him this, when he had been so stupid a boy as to assume such nonsense. He wonders, truly, which gods decided to give him to this man, and allow him to love him so. Then Will just kisses Hannibal again, hands against his face, and doesn’t wonder at the gods anymore.

What right does he have?

And in truth, does it really matter, when he has this and will never let it go?


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fear pierces skin now, and Will’s breathing still in his lungs entirely. He can’t swallow. He can’t do more than sit entirely still and watch, wait for Hannibal to realize that his words have paralyzed Will where he sits, to turn to him properly and allow that reassurance, at least, to start his heart again.
> 
> “You would go with Sparta?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, always, to our wonderful beta-reader [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for taming our typos and catching runaway commas!

Lightning splits the sky. Will watches it branch blinding bright between clouds black as the sea at night.

He blinks.

And thunder’s savage crash sends his ears ringing.

Beside him are canyon walls, craggy with rock but so steep they seem to curve above his head. In either direction, no discernable end to the valley in which he finds himself. Lightning illuminates the path beneath his feet and he chooses to turn, and run back from where he came.

Rain thickens the earth beneath his feet, slow at first, just enough to stop the dust exploding from his heels. They slam against the ground as long legs carry him and he seeks for his dogs, his fellow soldiers, his general, and is alone, until the clatter of thunder becomes a drumbeat.

It drives his heart faster, echoing from both sides of the ravine. His only escape is upward, nails tearing against glass-sharp rocks as he heaves his weight up, hanging by arms that scream in agony, the soles of his feet ripped bloody where he scrambles. The storm is coming. The storm is here. His lungs squeeze themselves free of any air, fill with water from the pounding rain.

The ledge he finds is hardly enough for him to sit on, slanted towards the ground below where shadowy figures fill the pass like water. His fingers clutch the outcropping, heels dig in hard. In a burst of light, he sees their armor, shining bronze over hard muscle, the proud plumes of their helmets, the rough call and response from front to back again. Laconians, and at their fore, the king of Sparta who hides not behind shield and security but leads the charge.

Will shoves back against the jagged rocks that dig bruises into his skin. He cannot see the faces of the men who approach the Laconians, their bodies folded in shadow, sweeping cloaks that mask their feet. He is not sure that they are all, entirely men. There are monsters among them, hulking beasts that stand tall as two men, with sinuous noses and horns that sprout from their mouths longer than any spear.

And they are manifold. A legion of a hundred thousand, more, spanning back as far as Will can see and further still than that. He does not see their king, but it is Leonidas who he watches now, shouting his command to hold the pass.

It is Leonidas, who leads fearlessly, and brings to ground one of the monsters first to show that they too can be broken.

It is his men who drive off a ceaseless wave of invaders who break upon them like the sea against the shore.

Days pass, weeks perhaps, lifetimes begun and ended in this barren place. There is no end to the Persian troops, each fallen replaced with two more, unfolding like a hydra against the tiny force who at their back holds the hopes of their entire nation.

Until, at their backs, they instead find another wave, that will crush their faltering shore between them.

It is not enough.

It could never be.

And as the rest take the order to retreat, a few hundred remain. 

For their own honor, for their Laconia, for the sanctity of Greece and all those in her. Tireless, they fight, dozens of Persians felled by every sword and spear. Tireless, they hold. Glistening armor battered dull, helmets crushed to split their skulls or lost against the shredded earth beneath, until spears break and swords fracture, and even then they fight with hands and teeth until they are swarmed.

It is Leonidas, who falls, driven through with a spear thrust hard enough to splinter weakened armor.

It is his men, who fall, yielding only in broken bone and bloodied bodies, and give way to Xerxes, whose laughter rings loud as thunder.

Will slips on the ledge, the stone turning further towards the ground, sliding against itself to push Will closer and closer to falling, until his nails dig in and break, until he is pressed to the side of the cliff by will alone, the rain slicking him to slip, to fall, to join the legion below him. And he cannot feel the cold, cannot feel the pain in his hands, his legs that cling and bleed on the rock, he feels nothing at all but a heavy grip of resignation, of such depth of fear that he does not respond by fighting, but by just letting it pass him over, like a wave.

Will wakes with a jerk, eyes opening slowly and heart thudding in his ears. He is soaked, and for a moment wonders if he had fallen to the ground, had soaked his skin in blood and viscera and rain and by some miracle had returned to wake here. But his arm is slick only with sweat, cold and tacky but his own, no death here. He unclenches his fist and sees blood there, from the cut made the day before, to bind them together.

It is enough to calm him. Injury of his own making for such a cause. It is not the blood of so many brave men mowed down by an endless army.

Will pushes himself up on his arms, feels Yelp behind him, tail thunking against the side of the tent, wet cold nose buried against the nape of Will’s neck. Before him, he feels an empty cot. Perhaps Hannibal had woken and gone for water, to relieve himself before returning in the cold morning as the camp stirred to life. Will swallows, drops a hand back to run fingers through the shaggy fur of his stupid dog, to receive the hot tongue smooth and reassuring against his palm, a joyful wheeze in place of a bark, when Will turns to sit up in bed, knees drawn up against himself beneath the blanket.

He considers the dream. A plausible fear of a mind anticipating war and having never seen it. Surely just a panic, nothing more. And yet something weighs on Will as heavy as his fear had, in his dream, something that tells him not to ignore this vision sent to him, so close to the eve of battle. He only wishes he knew what to interpret from the blood and rain and monstrous creatures and endless white noise of suffering.

The tent flap whispers open and Will’s eyes move to the figure standing there, Hannibal, tall and clad in armor already, all but his helmet, and the terror clenches around Will’s throat like a vice.

“Must you farewell the army so formally?” Will asks, voice quiet but smile genuine, seeking reassurance, giving his own. He’s cold, now, as the sweat dries against his skin, and he pulls the blankets closer.

The waxed canvas slips closed behind him, but for a stripe of sun that for a moment moves like lightning. Hannibal steps through the dogs whose bodies could occupy the whole tent entirely, and draws a hand through Will’s hair, smiling when he nuzzles against the thin cut that runs the length of his palm.

“Dress. Already the day begins without you.”

Little hands push against the pallet and Will arcs his back, feline and sleepy, wincing with a smile when he feels his body stretch from their rough and joyous consummation the night before. “Will you join me in the woods today? There must be less to do now.”

Hannibal’s tongue parts his lips and he turns towards the flap of the tent, fluttering wide as a breeze catches it and allowing in the sound of countless voices, their clanking gear, the dull thump of horses’ hooves against the soil. He considers the question, sweetly asked, and his voice remains soft despite the set of his jaw.

“You may go to the woods, if you wish. Or you may come with me.” His throat works down a coarse swallow and he frees his hand from Will’s hair to resettle the weight of his armor against his shoulders. “Leonidas has offered me to accompany the Laconians. He will not let me lead his legion, of course,” Hannibal notes with mild amusement, “but I doubt they would hearken my commands anyway.”

The fear pierces skin now, and Will’s breathing still in his lungs entirely. He can’t swallow. He can’t do more than sit entirely still and watch, wait for Hannibal to realize that his words have paralyzed Will where he sits, to turn to him properly and allow that reassurance, at least, to start his heart again.

“You would go with Sparta?”

Something in his voice catches, enough to pull Hannibal’s brows just enough together for Will to feel the displeasure there. He thinks of the rain. He can smell the ozone in the air that brings a storm closer, he can feel it coil in his bones and draws a hand through his hair.

“I go to fight Persians,” Hannibal responds, bending to slap lightly against Snow’s leg to get him to move, up and out of the tent. Yelp lays still pressed to Will where the reclines, lazy and silly, turning to his back for a tummy rub that never comes from either man. “Spartans just happen to outnumber me in this march.”

“Do not, not for this march,” Will asks him. “Please.”

Hannibal’s mouth twists, expression darkened as the sky before roiling clouds cover it. He allows Will time to gather himself, retract his words and stand. Hannibal looks to his own palm, the dark line that runs across it, and closes his fingers over it.

“Dress yourself. Your armor is prepared and there is work I must attend before we march.”

The boy is like stone, so still even his breathing seems stripped from him, with hands fisted in the thin wool blanket. “You are Athenian,” Will answers, shaking his head. “You are not -”

“Any more of Attica than I am of Laconia.” The general pulls himself tall, spine straightening and shoulders spreading, and the warmth vanishes from his eyes as if a fire were snuffed to ash. “I am a soldier. And where there is war to be fought, that is where I belong.”

“War will come here,” Will tells him, turning his head to try to catch Hannibal’s eyes again when the general turns away with a shake of his head. “War will come through them, Hannibal, they cannot hold that pass.”

“You are not a strategist,” Hannibal snaps. “You know nothing of the world outside of your city. An army is made to hold, it is trained to hold, and defend and fight. And we go with it.”

“Not to this.” Will pushes himself to stand from bed, uncaring for his nakedness when he catches Hannibal’s hand and narrows his eyes when he twists it free. “I am not a soldier but that does not mean I lack instinct and awareness, Hannibal, this is suicide. I will not let you go to it.”

He wants to tell him of the dream, of the rainstorm and the blood that seemingly fell from the sky, of the endless army, a sea in itself, surging and coiling, thousands of bodies, thousands of limbs and eyes and sharp bright teeth.

“I saw -”

“In your sleep?”

“I saw them fall -”

“Amongst dreams of flying, perhaps? Of magical creatures and mysterious cities?” He draws a breath, to ease the impatience sharpening his tone, but finds his ribs tightening.

“They will be massacred,” Will sighs, teeth gritted as if the knife-sharp stones still gouged into his skin. “All of them, Hannibal. I will not let you -”

“You will not let me,” Hannibal repeats, as though the words are an unfamiliar language. “You will not let me, because _you_ are afraid.” He steps closer, then, the boy’s trembling body pulled against unyielding bronze, arms around his shoulders. “Come. Breathe. Your fear is normal but do not let it turn your blood to water. You have had your time as peacemaker, now let me lead you. Follow in my steps if your own legs grow weak.”

Will makes a sound, small and fearful but his brows furrow in anger, in impatience and displeasure that Hannibal would so ignore him, here, would be so entirely overcome with his position, with the temptation of war and blood that he would not heed Will at all.

“You are not listening,” Will grits out and Hannibal’s hands tighten around his shoulders.

“Fear drives thoughtless words from unpracticed minds, Will.”

“Pride turns you cruel,” Will counters, and at that, Hannibal lets him go. Will swallows, steps back enough to raise his arms up and into his hair. He can feel the kisses Hannibal had sucked to his skin, the bruises his fingers had worked into tense muscle pulled shaking in pleasure. Each and all feel not his own, detached, given to him by an entirely different man.

“This is war, Will, and you came to it by your choice.”

“And I will follow you to the ends of the earth,” Will insists, desperate, “through to the gates of Hades itself, but I will fight my way there, I will not be carried. And this, Hannibal, this battle is a slide down into its maw, through blood and mud and no honor at all. This is a massacre in the semblance of bravery, Hannibal, you are wise enough to know this is futile.”

He curses when Hannibal turns away.

“You are worth more to this army than one victorious cry on a battlefield. And you are worth _everything_ to me!”

Hannibal raises his hand as Will's voice rings loud. He holds it high, quaking with his own adrenaline spiked high and beating his pulse like a hammer against his breastplate. And when he lowers it in a fist, he feels the cut sting beneath his fingers, and waits until Will's eyes open again.

"Do not raise your voice to me. Not where the men might hear you, and think me as weak as you would have me be."

"Then _listen_ ," Will hisses, stepping again into the sight of the man to block his exit. "You've told me of their number. I have seen ours. How many will you kill? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? And what then when there are a thousand more to replace them? It will be a butchery."

Hannibal's lip curls sinuous above his teeth. "A boy who thought himself a man. A man who thought himself a soldier. Now a soldier who thinks himself an oracle, but you are none of those things." He shoves Will aside but wheels on him, snarling. "You are a coward."

"And you swore to me," Will breathes, his voice breaking soft as the wind in leaves. "And if you meant your oath then you will not go."

Hannibal could laugh, wild with waiting, with working, with war now so close and taken from him by this boy who stares him boldly down.

"I swore," the general agrees, hands clenching to fists, fingers lifted to run through his oiled braid. "I swore, and already you shame me. And worse yet you make me shame myself, by going to the _king of Sparta_ and baring my belly."

“I will go myself,” Will tells him. “I would rather spend a lifetime in atonement, than see you go to a slaughter, now, Hannibal.” He swallows, eyes wide, wet and brows furrowed above them in terror. He fears war, he thinks he always will, yet were this a battle met in fairness, of even numbers and careful planning, he would tremble but he would don his armor and go, he would shed tears of his horror but he would go. And even now, were Hannibal to not relent, he would go, and he would die by his side.

But he will weather blows of words and fists both before Hannibal steps past him to leave him here.

“I call you to your oath. If you cannot step up and honor it, now, then you cannot claim any honor on the battlefield.”

The words draw a sharp breath, and Hannibal’s eyes widen as if struck, pain resonant in the breath he forces out, in the coiled sinews of his body. A knife would be a kinder betrayal than this, and though the man could so easily overpower the boy, shove him aside and step past, he stands stunned.

“If I stay,” he says, “then I betray those men and my own. They will whisper behind me back and call me coward, and they will not be wrong. The king will mock me, my men seek mutiny against a leader who is so swayed by a _boy_ that he has forgotten himself.”

A swallow works dry down his throat.

“And if I go, then you call me an oathbreaker, and deny me glory I have held long before you.”

Hannibal takes a step back, unsteady in this sundering, and does not meet Will’s eyes again. Rough fingers jerk loose the leather bindings of his breastplate and it falls to the ground with a clatter cheap as tin. In nothing more than his greaves and his chiton, skin made cold by the boy who once warmed it, Hannibal spreads his arms.

“Was this a holiday for you? A jaunt to the country, to play at being brave. An oath suggested, with clever tongue, so that you would not have to face a fight.” His hands fall slack to his sides, and with a mirthless laugh, he lets his head loll back. “You have made a liar of me, and a fool. Perhaps I am ill-suited to lead, so blinded by a craven boy as you.”

Will draws a breath to speak and Hannibal raises a hand to stop him, before letting it fall limply aside, stripped now of his honor before his men, bravery that for the whole of his life has been his only gift and comfort.

“Go. Take your things, your hounds, and do not return to this tent again. I do not want to look on you.”

Will feels his heart beat as if it burns within him, he aches, from relief that Hannibal will not go, from pain and shame for what he has made the man do, from his own sick desire for this to be over, after weeks of being here and waiting. Perhaps he is a coward, perhaps he is nothing more than a little boy with soldier’s clothes. 

He swallows, again, finds his throat still dry and ragged before gesturing gently for Yelp, whispering his name and pointing out the door. He does not look at Hannibal when he slips into his clothes, he does not look at him when he dons his boots and laces them. He does not look at Hannibal until he is at his side and about to leave, and his eyes burn as his throat does when he tries to look at him, tries to speak.

He leans, instead, enough to brush his forehead to Hannibal’s shoulder and closes his eyes, holds his breath, when Hannibal jerks away and steps past him further into the tent.

Will swallows, thick, and nods, just once. If this is the price for Hannibal’s life, then he will pay it. Pray to the Gods for their mercy, their help in convincing him, and thank them that he can watch him live, even if he may never touch him again.

He considers saying something, apologizing, pleading, and does neither. Instead, he just lifts the flap of the tent and lets it fall behind him.

The only name that Hannibal curses is his own. The only life wasted today is his own. The men who assemble en masse outside his tent, whether to victory or loss, will know honor. And he, held captive by his own foolish promises and his own blindness, is worth nothing to them.

He leaves his armor where it lays. A showpiece, now, marked with memories from Marathon, an honor that fades as if it were a lamp run low on oil. It is a callow thing to rest on one’s laurels and consider themselves secure, and for the first time since he was clapped in shackles and lead aboard a boat bound for Athens, Hannibal feels helpless.

Weak.

Useless.

Leonidas seems to care little for Hannibal’s words, less so for his change of mind. The king thinks poorly enough of Athens’ soldiers that the general’s behavior suits his expectations far more than the surprise that Hannibal would march with him to Thermopylae. It is hard to disappoint someone when they expect nothing. But Leonidas does expect that his tent will be kept in order for his return, radiant in his confidence, and Hannibal assures him that it will.

The work of slaves, but Hannibal has always been that, he supposes.

He will not hide from his shame, though, and stands atop the hill to watch the men go. Thebans and Helots and Spartans in the many hundreds, their excitement tangible as the promise of rain before a storm. It vibrates through Hannibal and though he stands planted, he wonders at the harm of going despite Will’s admonitions, couched in prophecy. He wonders what it would matter if he went, when he has been brought so low already.

By nightfall, the camp is quiet. Those who could not march and those men who accompanied Hannibal, whose doubtful looks he avoids, whose whispers of another warrior swayed to weakness by a woman - or near enough, by their measure - fall against him as if they were hurling stones. Hannibal nearly breaks his foot in kicking his armor aside as he returns to his tent, filthy from the dust spilled by marching feet, and laces it shut behind himself.

\---

The rain starts on the third day, and Will buries his face in Snow’s fur with a sigh. The few men that remain in the camp have grown more impatient. Restlessness pulling at the youngest, the need to show their strength, to prove their worth. Anger at the older men, who send dirty looks towards their general and whisper cruelties behind his back. Will wishes that that he could take from him. The dishonor is not his to bear, but Will’s to take. The shame does not belong to Hannibal.

Will eats little and leaves the tent less. At night he finds himself peeling the flap aside to cast his eyes to Hannibal’s tent on the hill, empty and silent, the two dogs with Will, now. He wonders if Hannibal curses him, he wonders if perhaps he had made a mistake. He spends a lot of time in silent prayer, just hoping, wishing, needing to know that what he had done, what he is making Hannibal suffer, was for a reason other than the selfish one to see him live another week, to see another battle.

When Will does leave the tent, it is to crude comments and filthy suggestions. Those, he can ignore. Being told what he should be doing, now that his ‘husband’ has tossed him aside, being told what he is good for, since he is clearly not here to fight. What he cannot ignore are the implications that it will be because of Hannibal that the war is lost, that it will be due to his misjudgement that men - good, brave men - fall and die in knee-deep mud and filth.

Twice Will has found himself pinned after daring to raise his voice in argument, raising his axe with intent to harm. Twice he has tasted the sharp knuckles of men’s hands against his jaw, twice he has held his arms over his head against the lashing of a belt in punishment for his insolence. This he can bear. This he does bear.

On the fourth day, he sees the lightning bloom across the sky as it had in his dream, and Will goes to the forest to offer blood to the Gods for giving him the insight, the ability, to keep these men alive for a while more. He says nothing to anyone when he returns drenched and with a rag around his hand. No one, in truth, cares to ask. That night, Will doesn’t sleep at all.

-

The storm’s raging keeps Hannibal from his tent for an entire day.

Horses scatter at the lightning and the booming bursts that follow, and in driving rain Hannibal works alongside the remaining men to mend the makeshift fences knocked down by frantic hooves. The hill floods, spilling mud through a swath of tents below. With no one inside them, no harm is done but to the structures themselves, which have to be pulled free again and set aside, heavy with water. The armor that was not worn to Thermopylae must be moved to higher ground. The remaining stores of food must be kept dry.

When one problem is resolved, two more emerge, and on the second day Hannibal laughs suddenly and loudly - drawing startled looks from the men and slaves alongside - at the thought that he ever imagined himself blessed. 

And still, they do not speak to him beyond agreements. Yes, general. Of course, general. The title is spoken without respect or affection. The men do not meet his eyes but in passing, turned away to hide their displeasure or amusement. He eats among them, but sits alone, and but for giving orders in the camp, he does not speak.

On the next day the storm has given way to only a steady rain, and on his way to check the fences once more, Hannibal passes the boy. It takes several steps for him to realize that it is Will, legs painted with bruises and chiton soaked through, and only that many steps again for Hannibal to continue by him. His hands stay at his sides, tightening and loosening, as though the sensation might be enough to ease the urge to sweep his damp hair from his face, and warm his wounds with careful hands. He holds his breath, as if that might be enough to stop him from calling to him.

Hannibal leaves the ties loose on his tent that night, and tells himself he doesn’t care that Will doesn’t come to him. It seems only right that he would lose him, too.

-

Will knows he has slept only because he wakes. Beyond the flap of his tent, the camp is in commotion, voices and running feet, and were it not for the general calm of the two dogs Will rests between, he would wonder if war had not come to them at last, here, as he fears it inevitably will.

He pulls on the tunic that has dried overnight and his boots, a cloak to stave off the chill in the air and allows the dogs free before taking an axe and setting out into the camp alone. No one pays him attention, but everyone is moving, packing tents or talking over the sound of those who are.

He does not ask what happened, he walks until he catches a snippet of conversation that can give him something, anything, to go on.

“- dead among them, the messenger says they were a legion from Hades itself.”

Will swallows, casts his eyes to the tents on the hill, does not see Hannibal. It would be him greeting the messenger, now, offering him food and rest and listening to news from the front. From a front that no longer exists, a front Will still tastes the bile of guilt over stopping Hannibal from ever seeing. But he feels the overwhelming relief that he had been right, that he had stopped these men from going to their certain deaths, that his dream was not just the nightmare of a foolish coward too young to face war.

He does not go to the general. He watches the camp for a while before returning to his cot again, exhausted and relieved, and falls asleep to the sound of life outside his tent.

The dogs depart one by one. Snow leaves at nightfall, to scavenge for dinner. Yelp shortly after, when dinner is brought to him and fed from a broad hand that softly snares his muzzle until he wheezes his pleasure.

Hannibal fills the entrance of the little tent, a fraction the size of his own. Will’s breath rises and falls steady, somehow entirely placid despite the ceaseless din of noise the camp. He finds that his thoughts quiet, too, as he studies the warm curl of color across Will’s cheek, overlaid by long lashes.

“I have a knife.” Will doesn’t open his eyes as he mutters, voice thick with sleep, and Hannibal would smile if the reason for Will to guard himself against intruders weren’t immediately obvious.

The moment passes, and with exhaustion digging furrows into his face, Hannibal sits upon the edge of the cot. Another moment passes, and Hannibal runs a hand through Will’s hair, his eyes closed. The messenger’s words ring in his ears.

 _Routed_.

 _Retreat_.

 _Remained_.

In the distance echo Will’s warnings, half-formed and frantic, the reminder of thunder long after the storm has passed. And though he knows the truth of the battle, Hannibal still asks softly, “Tell me what happened in your dream.”

Will swallows, eyes still closed and body slowly relaxing from the tension it had gathered hearing someone come into his tent. For a moment, he is entirely quiet, just breathing, just resting, before he parts his lips with his tongue.

“It was an army greater than the sea,” he says. "Wave upon wave of them came, monsters with coiled noses and curved fangs bent upwards, men the size no normal man can be.” Will takes a breath, releases it. “I saw the Spartans hold their ground. The army broke like a wave against them and our men did not waver. For days.” Will winces, finally allows his eyes to open. “For days the water fell and the blood mingled with mud beneath their feet. The Persians could not pass through them, could not move around them. And then they did,” Will blinks, curls his lips into his mouth as his words fall to whisper, harsh sounds between his teeth as he breathes his words out quickly, as though in saying them fast the events can wipe away, never happen. “Then they did, and the waves came from both sides, and they were not strong enough, not for two.”

Will turns his head into the hand gentled against him, shudders out a sigh. “We fell beneath the Persian army as sand does on the beach beneath the sea, and it passed, after, leaving nothing behind but bones and tattered shields.”

Will lies still, doesn’t turn, doesn’t move, and when he does, it is only to move his eyes up to meet Hannibal, to look at him and consider, wonder, seek his dark eyes for a forgiveness, for an understanding, or at least for a word to tell him that they are done, that this is done, and futile and over.

“And I made you stay behind,” he breathes. “Because I could not see you swept beneath a sea you so fear, because I knew you would be in that wall of men, standing tall until the last breath gifted you. I would have taken your place, as Patroclus did Achilles, but I would not have let you go there to be slaughtered, for the only thing to remain of you to be a memory of soldiers who had passed you in the camp once or twice, I could not.”

His words ring true, somehow miraculously true. Though their forces had numbered only in the thousands, and Persia's many more times that, the men fought days without rest to keep them held. Taunting the invaders when they have them chance to yield. Killing three Persians for every Greek who fell. Until -

"A traitor lead them, to encircle Greece from behind. A farmer," Hannibal says, mirthless, "who feared the fighting."

Will is motionless beneath Hannibal's hand, watching as he lifts the other to his face.

"A fraction survived the retreat. The Helots, the Thebans. No Spartans retreated, and Leonidas kept the pass long enough to allow it. He is fallen. His men are fallen. Three hundred stayed to hold back a hundred thousand."

“Would you have stayed with them?”

Hannibal’s jaw works, as he lets his hand fall back to his lap.

“Yes.”

His pride has vanished from him, guilt weighing down his shoulders in a way that armor never could. Slowly, as if every fiber and sinew were pulled too tight, Hannibal forces his body to stretch onto the narrow cot. His eyes close, and the scent of Will's hair soft against his mouth is enough to bring him trembling. Like sweat, like dogs, like home - perhaps all that will be left of it. Hannibal moves no more than that, seven days apart and wary now that even this will so suddenly be stripped from him.

Will swallows hard and seeks behind himself to find Hannibal's hand, to grasp it and draw it around himself, pushing himself back against Hannibal’s chest, back to fit against him as well as they always had until a week before, until they had disagreed so violently -

"I dishonored you," Will whispers. "Before a king and before your men."

Hannibal just wraps his arm further around Will’s thin form and buries his nose in the warm curls that have worked free of the braid Will is determined, otherwise, to keep so neat.

"I should have told them, perhaps they would have heeded, perhaps they would not have gone -"

"They held the pass. Had they not gone, it would have fallen without struggle, it would have allowed the entire Persian army to pour through."

Will just shakes, tired and hungry and finally pressed to Hannibal again where he thought he never would be, where he was terrified he never would be.

"We are here," Hannibal tells him. “Men not exhausted yet by battle, men with forewarning to gather more and make a tactical retreat before they come, attacking when we have the numbers, we will not be blind."

Will squeezes Hannibal's fingers and brings his hand up to his face, kissing his palm, nuzzling to it, just feeling him there again. There is no fervor between them, none of the fire that burned unquenchable every other time they’ve found themselves so tightly together. Instead, it is enough for them to simply touch, to feel the other’s breath still moving through their body, to keep their hearts in motion.

The men will heed Hannibal, if only because there are no others there of his station to lead them, and desperate men follow whomever leads when death is at their backs. There has been no word yet from Artemisium, whether the Athenian fleet held or fell, and so they will fall back towards Athens - evacuated and empty - and wait for word from the polemarch.

Hannibal wonders if they might not simply return to the farm, now, and hold their ground there - the two of them, alone.

His arms tighten around Will and he holds his breath, eyes closed and head ducked against the back of his neck.

“Forgive me,” Hannibal whispers.

A shudder pulls through Will’s body and he wriggles, adjusts in the tiny cot to turn and press his face against Hannibal’s neck, lips parted and warm there. It should not be Hannibal asking for forgiveness, but Will finds himself soothed by the words, in turn, forgiven by them.

He unfurls, enough to rest his chin atop Hannibal's head instead, to allow the man to burrow into Will for his own comfort, for his own need to feel held and protected. Loved.

And Will loves him. Beyond words or reason or argument. He will not run from the fight that comes to them, he will meet it at Hannibal's side and he will kill anyone who comes near, anyone who would seek to separate them again. They lie close for a long time, just holding together, until Hannibal's breathing eases in sleep, perhaps the first he has had in a long time, and Will’s fingers card through his hair.

He prays silently to the gods that listen, Greek and Neuri. Prays that he has the bravery to fulfill his own promise. Prays that they are kind to them, having allowed Will the chance to save Hannibal's life, once, already. He falls asleep to the sound of the camp and the beginnings of more rain. And he wakes to a floor covered in dogs, and Hannibal warm against him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Hush,” he tells her, and as if she understands him, she snorts once more and then quiets. Will slows Vih’r to an uneasy stutter, shying sideways, but when the thump of her hooves stop, the sound remains.
> 
> A drumming gallop against the dirt, carried on the wind that rustles the cypress growing wild alongside the road.
> 
> Hannibal sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and for a moment closes his eyes, listening to this distant heartbeat, and when his eyes open again, he says with a note of curiosity, “We’re being followed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by the eagle-eyed [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) \- we love you!

Considering the days spent erecting the camp, dismantling it takes only hours. The days of waiting seem a sudden luxury, as everyone now races to task. Shelters are broken down where they can be, abandoned when it proves more trouble than it’s worth. The horses and food animals are sent on ahead towards Athens, supplies next, along with artisans and armorers who have no place resisting the wave that crashes now towards their encampment and on to flood the whole of Greece. The once green field that seemed so welcoming on their arrival is beaten brown and lifeless, revealed as piece by piece the camp falls.

Hannibal is heard. He is heeded. He is followed in his orders because in times of panic, men look for a voice to lead. Little thought and fewer words are given to the cowardice he showed in avoiding the pass, and in his regalia, he sits tall and proud, his horse’s hooves pounding along the outskirts of the camp to ensure that those who need to flee can fall back to some imagined safety. To Athens, evacuated, and beyond to cities further still where their wives and children wait.

In hushed voices, soldiers whisper the name of Leonidas, and already his legend grows. They say that he held the pass for days with an army of only several hundred - they say that he perished only at Xerxes’ spear point, standing upon a mound of Persian dead. He is famous now - more than just as king of Sparta, but as a hero. Will wonders if that is what Hannibal meant for himself, an immortality born of honorable death, and knows its truth from the tension the general carries in his jaw each time he overhears the Spartan king’s name whispered with awe.

“We will take the rear,” Hannibal says, wheeling his horse to alongside Will. “Once the others have gone ahead, our men will follow.”

Will just nods, eyes on the small woods that have grown smaller still, the place they had sworn themselves to each other, the place he had spent months of hot summer practicing and whittling and waiting. Now it too looks grayed, and aged, as the men do. As Hannibal does. Will bites back another apology for Thermopylae. As much as his heart yearns to sing Hannibal’s name and have it heard whispered as Leonidas' is, he would not see him fall. Not there. Not where it was a massacre, rather than a battle.

Will swallows, shakes his head, and whistles sharp for his hounds to heel.

They are formidable, standing almost as tall as the horse Will rides, lanky and shaggy and strong. Snow's bark enough to vibrate bones, Yelp bigger than his brother and imposing enough in stature alone. Up to their stomachs in mud. Will can only imagine what beasts of Hades they will be when they are covered so in blood, teeth bared and wet with it.

He sets a hand against his axe, the other strapped to the saddle with his shield, and guides Vih'r with his body alone.

"How far will we get?" He asks, eyes scanning the camp as Hannibal’s are, committing this all to memory.

It’s a weighted question, and Hannibal gives it due consideration. “I know not,” he finally answers, as their horses strike up a steady trot, the last of the last to leave the camp, as Hannibal’s men ride just ahead and in their wake leave memories and death, which follows at their heels.

“But we will make for Thebes, and then on to Athens,” Hannibal continues, and with a shift of muscles, his horse eases into a steadier gait for the long ride ahead, less jostling than the trot but not so swift or tiring as a canter. “Word was sent to Artemisium of our failure here. Gods willing, Themistocles fared better.”

As for greater strategy, Hannibal has none yet. They are a smaller band now by many tens than those that marched to defend the pass, and it would take little to overwhelm them. They’ll need to join a larger force, behind stable walls, and even that thought offers little comfort compared to the immeasurable weight of Persia bearing down on them.

Hannibal considers, for a moment, returning to their distant farm, and hoping the tempest passes by and they remain unnoticed.

For a moment, only, before he drives his horse onward.

\---

It doesn’t rain as they ride towards the city, the rage of the storm spent on the Persians and brave Greeks who fought them. Camp is set quickly, the bare minimum unpacked for the army to settle. Sentries are posted and patrol, no one sits still. Everyone awaits a messenger or a scout and worry more when they meet none.

The villages they ride through are bare, abandoned at the command of Athens, and Will tries not to think of their farm as they pass others. He tries not to imagine the stables empty, silence interrupted only by a steady beating of an unhinged door against its frame. He tries not to think of the pastures overgrown where the goats and horses have not chewed them down. He tries not to think of the house, dusted and forgotten with no one there to breathe life into it.

At night, Will barely sleeps. Frightened he will have more dreams that show him things he shouldn’t see. But after two nights of restlessness his body gives in, pressed warm against Hannibal’s chest, held safe, face buried in the soft back of Snow who curls up by the cot, tall enough even in rest for Will to duck his nose against. He sees no dreams. He allows himself to sleep, the nights after.

Mostly, they ride in silence. Once in a while, an argument will break out, or heated discussion far ahead of the general and his boy. Rarely does it need intervention. Amongst themselves, Will and Hannibal speak Neuri, theorizing and planning, ideas later brought to the rest of the strategeon that is left, the next morning amended as they move onwards towards their home.

There are moments when Hannibal is near. Present. When he seeks out Will’s fingers to twine and squeeze together as they ride, when he sweeps a hand across his hair and draws him nearly toppling from his saddle to press a kiss to his temple. At nights, Will wonders if his general thinks at all of the world outside their tent, when he’s pressed so close that all he can see is Will, and his voice breaks in pleasure without mind for who nearby hears it. The comments have ceased, in the flurry of their flight. No one pays their affection any mind, when there are graver matters at hand.

But they are moments, shared together, glimpses of once-endless days where little more mattered than when the goats would birth and what chores remained to tend before the sun set. In most of their time together now, Hannibal is hardly there at all. Distant, unfocused in his gaze as though all at once taking in the scope of everything and nothing. He speaks in orders and commands. He holds himself rigid.

He stops, in a cloud of dust upturned by the soldiers that ride on ahead, and his horse jerks her head in displeasure.

“Hush,” he tells her, and as if she understands him, she snorts once more and then quiets. Will slows Vih’r to an uneasy stutter, shying sideways, but when the thump of her hooves stop, the sound remains.

A drumming gallop against the dirt, carried on the wind that rustles the cypress growing wild alongside the road.

Hannibal sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and for a moment closes his eyes, listening to this distant heartbeat, and when his eyes open again, he says with a note of curiosity, “We’re being followed.”

Will turns his horse, enough to ride closer to Hannibal so the horses stand top-to-tail to each other as their riders speak. Their dogs are lazing in a cart of supplies, far ahead, too unused to such long treks for the men to subject them to it, so they rest. Will presses his lips together.

“Do you know how long for?”

“I cannot say.”

“How many?”

“A dozen at most,” Hannibal shrugs. He offers Will a smile that is only a shadow of the genuine, warm expression he had grown so used to seeing on the farm, in their early mornings at the camp together.

“A scouting party.” Will chews his lip, eyes on the distance whence the sounds of hooves come but no sight of horses presents itself. They will come, he knows, over the rise in several moments. Or disperse and try to take the back of their retreat in a circle. As predators would close off the weakest from a herd. He gently runs his thumb over the tip of his axe, sharp still, but Will practiced enough with it to know how not to do himself harm.

“A dozen for a dozen?” Will asks after a moment, brow up as he watches Hannibal, the man stoic still, a strange gleam in his eyes that craves this, that still frightens Will a little to see. When he nods, Will feels himself smile, excitement humming in his blood before it speeds his heart. He says nothing more, and kicks Vih’r to move again, circling Hannibal and drawing his hand over the man’s thigh before riding after the soldiers, the little horse making quick progress to cover ground.

Behind Hannibal, Vih’r’s hoofbeats fade. Before him, new ones approach. He thinks of Thermopylae and he thinks of how few men faced so many, and for a moment, considers that perhaps he might make his own stand, here, alone. He could ride to face them with weapon drawn, barreling down to surprise the scouts and catch them off-guard and either butcher them or be himself killed in trying.

For a moment, only.

His horse drives a hoof into the soil, impatient now as Hannibal for this to begin. It is a blessed quiet, their blood rising in tandem, quickening in their ears until it rushes like the sea, and all at once as soldiers return behind Hannibal with Will leading them all, so do the scouts crest the path towards them.

A blessed quiet.

Before with a shout, they converge.

Hannibal’s thighs snare tight around his horse as she drives forward, haunches ducked nearly to the earth to gather speed beneath her. From his side, he draws his sword, from his back, his shield, movements his muscles complete without thought, as innate to the man as breathing. He is without his helmet, now, stored in one of the pack horses ahead, but Will’s careful fingers that morning bound his hair back from his face and it does not fall to his eyes.

He curses them, as the Persians - ten, on lanky desert horses - barrel towards their ragged band. Strange armor, strange robes and strange faces, they are all the same to him, the same invaders for all that matters as the ones who have pursued the man for the length and breadth of his life. And now they come to his home - they come for his farm and for his men and for his Will.

And the more of them that Hannibal cuts down, the fewer there are to do harm to his boy.

Will pulled his axes free as he gathered the band to return with him, fingers practiced in gripping both in one hand as he held the reins and directed Vih’r where she needed to be. He follows, now, not out of cowardice but out of need to settle his mind, to remember what he was taught and immediately forget it. He thinks of how Hannibal had told him, as they sparred on the packed earth until Will was panting and sweating and sore, how his body would learn, even if his mind did not remember.

It did. After weeks of work he would know how to flatten himself, how to properly fall, not because he was thinking of the technique taught but because his body had conditioned itself to learn. And so he will here, he knows. He will raise his axes as he was taught, but he would let them seek their own wounds to make. He would let them taste the blood they hunger for.

His finds his voice rising with those of the other soldiers before him, simply for need to have it heard, to have that energy leave him before he bursts, from excitement and anger and terror all. They are few but they are not men to grapple with and practice, they hold weapons built to kill, they wear armor slicked once with Greek blood already. Will knows if he allows himself to think, he will have no heart to fight. 

So he does not allow thoughts, just heart, and turns his body as Vih’r takes a leap to catch up, as they near the men who seek to kill them, who seek to bring more to do the same, and tosses an axe past his own men to hit one of the front scouts on the shoulder.

He falls with a cry, pulling his horse with him, unsteady on her long legs and screaming when she goes, crushing her rider beneath her as she kicks out in the dirt, trying to get upright again. A good enough throw to fell, not to kill. Will draws his lips back in a snarl and holds the other weapon poised to do better when he rides nearer. His head hums and his heart howls, and his next blow nearly severs the man’s head from his shoulders as Will leans almost to falling from his horse to kill the man, blood seeping to the soil beneath.

Then he rides on.

Hannibal shouts his name and through the scrape and clatter of weapons and armor, through the din that fills his head to buzzing and his mouth with the taste of metal, Will hears his voice. It is strong enough, full of air and fire enough, that Will knows his general to be uninjured, and despite the cry, he pushes forward. Over the rise and down again, Vih’r’s hooves seeming to skim the earth entirely, and when before Will there rises a cloud of dust, he knows his choice was right.

There, ahead, rides a lone Persian scout, barreling back nearly as fast as Will towards the army far behind.

Nearly as fast.

But not as.

And certainly not faster.

He will not reach them, Will decides, letting his shoulder loosen and his forearm tighten, axe at his side. He must not reach them. Let them draw their own conclusions as to what became of this party, let them not know with certainty where the remains of the force have gone. The man - the boy - glances over his shoulder, hardly older than Will himself, with dark eyes and oiled hair, worn long down his back.

He blinks, and in his unfamiliar tongue, shouts before bending nearly flat across his horse’s neck. Will could laugh for it. If this is war, let it come - let it be a matter of racing horses, no matter how much longer the legs of the Persian breed than their own. They are as stout of heart as they are of limb, and no horse - none in the world, Will imagines wildly - is as fast as Vih’r.

Stride by stride the distance shrinks, stride by stride Will’s heart picks up faster. If he throws his weapon and misses, he is bereft, and alone. If he does not stop the scout, if there are more Persians beyond this one -

He does not think of it.

He will not.

He cannot.

Not when the scout suddenly wheels in a turn so sharp his knee is nearly pressed to the ground. Not when the curved blade of his sword blinks blinding in the sun. Not when the innocent surprise in seeing Will riding behind him is replaced with savagery.

Will hefts his weapon but before it can be thrown, the man is on him. Metal shrieks as his axe catches the blade of the man’s sword, but an agile pull is not enough to disarm him. Will ducks, spurs Vih’r forward, spins her again and only just brings up the flat of his axe to divert the scout’s weapon from his throat. It is too close, too near, jostled by the horses shying rigid from and towards in a clattering of hooves -

Does not.

Will not.

He cannot die here.

With a shout, Will stops fighting the movements of his horse and leans with her, their bodies one. She does not flee or stagger, she moves away from the light of the scout’s sword, tearing wildly, and Will knows that they will exhaust each other seeking a glorious strike, something proud, blinded by their own ferocity. They will miss and block and parry until one falters. They will fall together.

And there is more honor in a victory, however won, than in attempting to prove one’s worth and failing.

Suddenly Will swings, bringing his body low, and his weapon cleaves into the meat of the scout’s leg. He cries out, the limb nearly severed in two, but without it he cannot bring his body to bear the weight of the sword down on Will. He catches him, skims his skin enough to draw blood, but it hardly matters when Will jerks his weapon free and brings it down again, to gouge deep into the man’s shoulder, cutting nearly to the breastbone.

There is no shout this time.

There is the beating of hooves of two horses, then of one, as the scout falls and his horse drags him far enough to get caught in the rough gorse that grows just off the road. Tangled, the creature pants, whinney shrill and loud. Will does not approach her, he lets Vih’r turn their course in a gentle trot back to the rest of their party.

Will raises his face to the sky, catching his breath and feeling the sweat dry against his skin as he smiles, as he presses his teeth together and laughs. He feels alive. He feels entirely, genuinely alive, as he never has before.

He squeezes his weapon in his hand and suddenly it feels heavy in his grip, suddenly too hot, suddenly no longer part of himself but something else, something wrong. So Will drops it to the ground, the thud enough to break him of his reverie, of the trance of adrenaline and energy, and he pulls Vih’r to a sharp stop, ignoring her displeasure and pawing as he dismounts. His legs are like water, and Will manages only a few steps back to his weapon before he stumbles and catches himself on all fours on the ground. 

It rocks beneath him like an ocean, and Will wonders why his breathing is so shallow when moments before he had felt like he was the wind itself. He wonders why his vision is blurred when moments before he had thought himself able to see to the horizon and back. He laughs again, a hand up to his mouth to press the sound back, and smells the blood, metallic and hot, slicking down his arm from the cut he doesn’t even feel.

It’s overwhelming, it’s putrid, and in a second Will is doubled over and sick, stomach emptying to the ground in heaves of bile and something worse. He shakes, he digs his fingers into the soil to hold himself steady and his heart beats and beats and beats in his ears as everything suddenly strikes in stark, sharp, impossible relief.

He lives.

The other does not.

The other does not, by his hand.

Will makes another sound, a weak little thing, and ducks his head between shaking arms to sob softly against his own chest.

He does not hear the hooves approach over the sound of his grief, but feels them thud through the ground. It was dry, before, the soil was dry but it’s wet, where he sits, with tears and vomit and the blood of himself and another boy, who thought himself a man. Another boy who maybe had his own general awaiting him, another boy far from home and wanting nothing more than to return to it again.

Will’s shoulders shake as sobs wrack him to sickness, but his belly is empty and the ground falls away and he is held, against broad shoulders and in sweat-slick arms, muscles trembling around him as Hannibal holds him fast.

The man does not speak, there is nothing right now to say that cannot be said later. But for a brisk search of hands over Will’s frame, he seeks only proof that the blood on the ground is not from a grievous wound.

Hannibal does not ask why Will weeps.

He knows.

And he lets tears and slowing blood soak his chiton as he holds Will against him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you," Will whispers, swallowing. "The Gods can have my wound in thanks for returning you to me."
> 
> “Do not offer them more than that,” Hannibal warns, though with a small smile. “Else I would see no good in being returned at all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boundless love to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) for her mad beta skills!

Hannibal gives instruction.

Quiet words muffle more when he curls his arm around Will’s head, as much to cradle the boy against him as to mute what his mind will let him hear. He tells the men to gather the surviving horses, and bring them to the others ahead. He gives orders to drag the bodies off the road a distance, in hopes they will not be found. Viable weapons are taken.

There is no viable armor, sundered by swords and punctured by spears.

Will asks to help, and Hannibal tells him he’s done enough.

He sleeps, as they ride, and even when he does not sleep he is near enough to it, lax and heavy on Hannibal’s horse with him, gaze distant, as once they rode through the streets of Athens, so many years before. After a time, with quiet certainty, Will returns to Vih’r, so near to Hannibal even still that their knees bump as they ride together, and Hannibal keeps a hand on Will’s thigh.

When camp is made, it is night. No fires are lit for wariness after the skirmish earlier in the day, and with the bulk of their former encampment well ahead and pushing for Athens, Hannibal and his men are as good as alone.

They can see the city, distant and small, and but for the moon illuminating in silver the polis’ marble, they would not see it at all. All able-bodied men are at Artemisium. All families sent on to Laconia. Hannibal imagines, as he turns away, that it must be peaceful there, in cities that echo silence rather than the ceaseless voices of its citizens.

He slips from his horse, and asks the soldier nearest for his things, and water - there was a stream they passed, however much can be spared so long as every man has his fill.

Will dismounts as well, and stands idly stroking Vih’r’s nose, gentle touches up and down it, to her soft muzzle and up to scratch between her eyes. She snorts and nudges her head against Will and he smiles, though he can feel the effort it takes to. He feels hollow. Empty. Still sick despite many hours, now, since he emptied his stomach. He wonders if that will go away. He fears to ask Hannibal, knowing the answer will be no.

He does not look to Athens. He does not look to camp. He looks at Vih’r and takes comfort in her smell and her warmth, opens his palms when she seeks for a treat, and apologizes to her in Neuri that he has nothing for her.

“My brave girl,” he tells her instead, “you outran the wind itself.”

He doesn’t startle when Hannibal touches him but he stiffens, for just a moment before he leans back. He knows he should not be so weak, knows that others have killed today, just the same, and no one else is leaning against another for support.

“It happened so fast I didn’t even realize it had until I was on the ground,” Will murmurs, frowning, thoughtful.

Hannibal slips his arm around Will’s shoulders, and with careful fingers begins to unfasten the leather cords that hold his cuirass in place. “Clever boy,” Hannibal says, and with little care for how their armor scrapes together, he keeps Will close enough to turn a nose into his hair. “You were wise to look for their runner.”

He presses a kiss to the fine curls of Will’s hairline, just above his ear. Though they both stink of sweat and blood, sickness and exhaustion, he pays it little mind, and carefully catches Will’s breastplate as it falls free, before removing the back of the linothorax. The bronze claps to the ground, and Hannibal wraps both arms around Will’s body, hands spread to rub feeling back into his skin, knowing the numbness - the bitter, lingering chill - that comes with this.

“You were brave,” the general adds, lips warm against Will’s shoulder, “to face him alone.”

He says nothing of how he worried, how quickly and brutally he struck down those in his path to clear it so that he could follow. He says nothing of the bile, rising to his own throat, when he saw the blood clotted on the road and heard the terrified scream of a horse. A finger traces the dark line down Will’s arm, a shallow cut but one all the same.

He says nothing of the black thoughts that erupted in him at even the notion that Will might be injured, let alone -

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him, apropos of nothing but his own thoughts, and his dizzying gratitude to the gods for looking after them today. “I am proud of you.”

Will’s eyes close and he leans back into the hold, reassuring and strong. Always loving. Always true. Behind his eyes, Will can see the way the Persian’s own had widened, how he had expected to best Will in a fight on horseback, how he had expected to slice him from his mount and continue back to his army, be the victorious messenger who made it home with the news. And even still, Will cannot dissect the intricacies of the interplay between them, he cannot see who struck first and how the other parried. He sees only the boy’s eyes, and then his blood on the ground.

“I felt good,” Will says softly, “when I saw that I survived and he did not.”

“Do not blame yourself for living,” Hannibal murmurs, drawing a hand through Will’s hair and resting his head back against his shoulder. He presses a palm to his forehead and gentles him to calm. “Consider what he would have done had you let him live.”

Will does. Considers how he, too, would have taken news of the retreating army to his own general, gleeful and delighted, how he would have sought to get to him, dreamed of it when he had been sent scouting, to make him proud. But that boy would have returned with the entire force, before they were ready to even take a stand.

Will does not think that he could have been killed. He thinks that Hannibal would have been. And suddenly the pity in his stomach turns to heavy lead and he turns his head to press warm lips to Hannibal’s neck, feeling his pulse there, beating slow and steady in reassurance.

With another kiss to his temple, Hannibal slips a hand down Will’s arm. The bronze bracers surrounding slender wrists are worked gently free. Each piece of armor carefully removed, each stretch of skin released to breathe and chill in the evening air. Two water skins are brought to them, and as Will’s eyes meet those of the man who sets them gently to the ground, he realizes that he knows him - one of Hannibal’s brothers-in-arms who visited the farm, who would stay up late drinking and boasting.

The soldier inclines his head, and Will returns the gesture, small, before the man leaves with their horses in tow.

“Because of you, we live,” Hannibal tells Will. “Without knowing how near the closest soldiers might be to us, they could have beset us even when we proved victorious in our own fight. Because of you, peacemaker, none were lost.”

Hannibal keeps a hand pressed to Will’s stomach, circling it over his hips as he steps around to face him. Before Will can draw a breath to protest, the general settles to his knees, and the same as with all the others, he works free the curved bronze that protected Will’s shins.

He tries not to think of the first blow that staggered the boy, nearly severing his leg, and cannot help but see it again when his eyes close and his breath hitches. And this, too, is restored to him, when Hannibal touches a kiss to Will’s leg, and sets wide hands against his calves.

“Would that I had been there,” Hannibal murmurs, “to see you in your glory.”

Will sighs and bites the inside of his lip. There is no use in protesting the words, and a small part of Will awakens that is proud, that is preening, at having caught the runner himself, at having chased him down despite his lead, at having stopped him. Those things he can be proud of with grace. He cannot yet be proud of the blood he spilled, of the boy he had killed.

And the man, before him.

Hannibal had retrieved that axe for Will so he would not have to see the carnage wrought.

Around them, the men prepare for evening, speaking quietly. No one sends Will filthy glances here, despite how obviously and publicly he and Hannibal show their affection. No. To them he has proven his worth, and his right to stand by the man who leads them. At least here. He may have lost his traction after the fact, but he had not run, he had not left the fight to the men, he had gone with them, ridden bravely and killed clean.

"Next time I will honor you by standing tall, to greet you," Will promises, and his smile is a little stronger as he runs his fingers through Hannibal's hair.

Hannibal only hums, he does not insist on it - he understands, entirely, the swell of shock and terror that comes from seeing another person cleaved by one’s weapon. He understands how it feels to fight for fear of one’s own being killed, instead. He understands how it feels to fight and see the deaths of friends and family despite.

He understands, and holds a kiss against Will’s hip until the heat of his mouth joins the heat of skin under Will’s blood-stained chiton, and only then, slowly stands.

“Sit,” he tells him. “Eat. You have earned it.” A smile catches his words, his fingers catch Will’s braid and tug it gently.

The general steps aside then, to remove his own armor. A grimace flickers when he loosens it from the bruises beneath, but it held, and he took no such cuts as Will did. Hannibal glances towards it, as Will sits, a bright line down his arm - a light wound, but his first.

The sensations of fear and pride tangle together. It has been too many years since he’s felt it, and never so intensely as this.

He would cut down Xerxes and all his monsters to prevent his peacemaker being wounded again.

Armor left behind, Hannibal makes his way to the bundle carried on his horse, a small sack left for him with the water skins. He seeks out roots and takes out a plant gathered as they kept camp near Thermopylae, and plucks off its leaves to set between his teeth. Chewing, he returns to Will with water in hand, and pours a handful down his arm to flush the blood away.

“You will hold this,” he tells him, removing the chewed leaves from his teeth. “Hold it to your wound and it will stop the pain.”

Will obeys, spreading the paste over the cut and pressing it down. It smells of petrichor, almost sweet and entirely familiar. Will waits, as Hannibal drinks from the skin to wet his throat, and smiles as his arm starts to feel cool, not numb but soothed, pleasant. In truth, he had not felt the pain at all until they had stopped for camp. He could see the blood, the wound it seeped from, but his mind did not associate such a thing with hurt.

"The hounds must be enjoying their laziness," Will murmurs, and finds himself grinning at the thought.

"And my soldiers their company," Hannibal adds, and it is enough to draw a little snort of laughter from his boy. The men still fear those dogs as rabid beasts, yet one will find Yelp drooling on him in lazy recline come evening, reputation sullied by that dog's need to cuddle.

Will leans against Hannibal, turns to nuzzle his cheek against the general's shoulder. He is alive. They are both alive. Will breathes him in and rests a hand against his thigh, just holding onto him that way, too, comfortable and tired and filthied by blood and dust.

"I love you," Will whispers, swallowing. "The Gods can have my wound in thanks for returning you to me."

“Do not offer them more than that,” Hannibal warns, though with a small smile. “Else I would see no good in being returned at all.”

The general slips a hand to the back of Will’s neck, to tug him close and touch a kiss to his brow. Another to his cheek. One to the corner of his mouth. They nuzzle to the other’s cheek and breathe, simply breathe together. In truth, _proud_ is an understatement. He is full, ribs pressed apart as if to bursting, with the honor that Will has brought him in his bravery, in his ferocity despite having only ever sought a life of peace.

Hannibal will give that to him again, he will fight and he will survive - they will - to find that quiet space in the world again. And until they do, they have this.

He feeds the boy from his fingers, portions of hard bread and dried fruit, smoked meats that take ages to chew. It is a far cry from the farm, but theirs, still, and even as Hannibal listens to his men - conversing and bragging and congratulating - he is focused almost entirely on Will. Nose pressed to his temple. Lips against his cheek. Until Will settles beneath his arm, and each feeds the other, and no one pays them any more mind than anyone else.

It is late into the night when they sleep, Will having spent a few hours quietly convincing Hannibal that he needs rest, that someone else can keep watch tonight and he can lead them to Athens the next morning. Will finds broken dreams jerking him awake from fitful sleep, but no nightmares, no horrors behind his eyes. He does not see the boy he had killed.

In the morning, the dew lays heavy over the grasses around them and the fire is stoked longer than perhaps they should allow, as everyone warms by it, milling around, gathering their armor and holding their cloaks around themselves like shields. Will helps take down tents, finds himself thanked by men who once had followed him into the little woods to torment him and hurt him. He finds himself sharing warm wine with men he had seen at Hannibal’s home, who laughed when he spoke of philosophy.

It is a strange feeling he cannot explain, but he mounts Vih’r smiling, chin raised in pride and pleasure. It is several days still to the city herself, though she sprawls long enough that they will come upon the outskirts perhaps by nightfall. There is a strange sense of homesickness, though it has been years since Will has seen Athens as his home, and not the farm.

He wonders where the men of scrolls and thought have gone, wonders what his home looks like, if anyone had stayed. He hopes he can see his father before they ride on, if only to show him that he has grown to make him proud. It’s unlikely he’s left, despite the evacuation - he would not go with the women and children, and he is not young and able enough to go with the bulk of Athens’ men to Artemisium.

There is always the chance of more riders behind, as the ones who came upon them the day before. It gives Hannibal little pause to consider, but when they come to the road that breaks away, winding through the hills, towards the farm. It would be another day’s ride to reach it, the men and horses worn enough already, and even still Hannibal considers it, but for the ghostly hoofbeats formed in his heart.

“Soon,” he tells Will, when he finds the boy watching that way as wistfully as he must have been. “Soon we’ll be home. Asherah would not take kindly to us leading a band of Persians to her doorstep,” he adds, eyes narrowing in warm amusement.

Will nods, swallows, lifts the corners of his lip in an obedient smile that grows softer, more genuine, when he looks at Hannibal again.

“No,” he agrees. "We will come to her victorious instead.”

So she can tell them off for tracking mud into her home. So she can scold them their bruises and scrapes and new scars. So she can hold them in embraces that crush their ribs as surely as any weapon and tell them she has missed them.

Will directs Vih’r away towards Athens, instead. 

His arm is wrapped but not aching beyond a gentle throb of discomfort. It was a shallow wound. He was lucky. His armor no longer feels like a dead weight against him, having seen one skirmish and sure to see more. It is still unmarred beyond dirt and blood, still the beautifully crafted gift his erastes had given him. Will bites his lip and ducks his head on a smile.

“Did you ever think you would see me in armor?” He asks, amused, tone warm. “When I stretched for you in the baths and declared I would be unclaimed forever.”

Hannibal rumbles low, and lets his eyes slip closed in memory. He recalls with perfect clarity the insolent squints and snorts that made him less boy and more a stubborn colt. He recalls how deeply Will had arched his back, on hands and knees, and how the water spilled steaming down his lanky limbs.

"In truth," Hannibal answers, "I hoped then that I would never see you again, and prayed mercy for the man who would be stuck with you."

Will's grin widens until he laughs, bright and sweet as birdsong in spring.

"You are still unclaimed," Hannibal says. "No mortal man could own you. I think even Zeus himself would face a battle in taming you."

"No one?" Will asks.

"No. I have not managed it," explains Hannibal. "I think that you laid claim to me instead."

The boy lifts his chin proudly, pleased by the summation, and Hannibal settles deep into his saddle, languid. Content, to be so near home, as if at even this distance his soul is somehow restored by it. Perhaps the wind joins them, from sea to farm to field. Perhaps even now Asherah has lifted her head from work to think of them, too.

"I thought at first that your beauty was in your youth," Hannibal admits. "And you had it then, too. Glorious and wild as Zephyr. But now - you have outdone yourself," he says. "The soil and scars, armor and marks. This," he says, reaching out to brush his knuckles over Will's scruffy chin.

“Eromenos no more,” Will reminds him, eyes narrowed in his pride and pleasure, a pink in his cheeks that has been missing since the dream, since the news of Thermopylae and their flight back to the city.

“You will always be beloved of me,” Hannibal tells him, and Will’s smile grows, warming his eyes, and drawing his brows in endless fondness. He turns to kiss Hannibal’s fingers before he can pull them away.

They should be coming upon their army, soon, faster as they are in a smaller band, and then on through to the city together. Will finds himself already excited to see the dogs again, knowing Yelp will clamber onto Hannibal’s horse just to be carried near him for a while, stupid dog. He remembers Hannibal’s displeasure with Will’s choice, how he would gently shove the puppy aside when he would try climb Hannibal’s leg in the kennels, how he would reject him until one day he did not.

Will thinks he had always loved that dog. Chosen for him by some fates or Gods or just by Yelp himself.

And, as if the beasts heard their twin longing, it is their voices that greet them first. From among the uneasy horses and remaining military - smaller than before, it seems - that wait outside the city's bounds, come Snow and Yelp.

The former carries enough voice for the latter, the latter speeding enough that he seems hardly to touch the ground. With a wordless shout of greeting, Hannibal slips from his horse to drop to knees, barreled onto his back from the force of them. Will watches, a moment, a smile shared small to see their eager greeting - lapping tongues and brusque words when Hannibal fondly scolds them - but his eyes drift back to the troops ahead. Surely the general has seen them, watching him with worry. Surely they've not escaped his fine-grained notice.

A moment of peace, of home, among the dogs and dirt, before he stands again and welcomes to speak the messenger who approaches wide-eyed and wary.

"What news?"

"The Persian fleet was routed," the young man tells him. "Three quarters blown apart in a storm."

"Praise, then," Hannibal says. He fans a hand to Yelp's muzzle, grasping gently to allow his fingers licked in welcome. "And the rest?"

"Destroyed by our own."

"What pales you, then?" Hannibal asks, and the messenger ducks his head.

"Athens -"

"Speak."

"The city -"

"Speak!"

"She's taken," breathes the boy.

Hannibal’s brows furrow, a moment for the words to sink in before he shakes his head, smile returning at the feeling of Yelp leaning heavily against him, enough to have Hannibal set one foot out for balance.

“We rode through villages untouched,” Hannibal says. “Not pillaged or burned. Met no soul on our way but a scouting party that we destroyed.”

“The army was here,” the boy insists, voice falling to be softer, as though the truth of his news could somehow be softened if he quiets. “They came like a flood. The city burns, general.”

Yelp’s next attempt at grabbing attention is met with a gentle shove away. With a wheeze he sits on huge haunches and pants beside the man instead, a wide yawn the only sound before Hannibal releases a slow breath and watches the boy bearing cruel news before them.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” the messenger shakes his head. “Another pass, perhaps, from the west. A betrayal from a scared village wanting to live through the march. I do not know.”

“Don’t know what?” Will walks closer, Snow beating his heavy tail hard against his legs. He’s smiling, still, bright and pleased. So close to home, now, close to the familiar, closer still to the farm, where they will go once this is through.

“Is Themistocles returning? Does he know?”

“Does he know what?” Will asks again, all too aware that he sounds like a child, suddenly, interrupting. All too aware equally that he does not care.

“The strategoi have left instructions to move for Plataea,” the messenger says, and spreading his palms, shows them empty, no more information than that. Will looks to his fingers as they close again, fisted as his side, and turns to Hannibal.

“But Plataea -”

“A day’s ride if we do not stop. Two if we must,” Hannibal says.

“But we’re _here_ -”

Hannibal meets Will’s eyes and without a word, he knows. He knows that they will not enter Athens, he knows that they are too late. The earth heaves beneath his feet and he shakes his head, a protest caught behind his teeth.

“There is nothing for us to do here,” Hannibal says, his voice knotted in his throat.

Will swallows, flexes his fingers, gentles the way he shifts and twists. “We could help -”

“There is no one to help, Will.”

“Cities do not just disappear,” Will says. “People do not just disappear. We can _help_ , we’re here, Hannibal, we’re right here -”

The words are like a blow, and Hannibal’s jaw sets. He tries to force it loose for a breath but the sound is terse, doing nothing to ease the tightening of every muscle from legs to throat, doing nothing to ease away the bitterness of his tone.

“Cities vanish. Whole people vanish,” he reminds him. “Settlements rise and fall like men, no different than the lives that make them. The city was evacuated, and those who stayed knew the risk in doing so. Will you stop the fires yourself? The city burns, peacemaker, I will not let you burn with it.”

“You would burn with the farm,” Will’s voice grates against his throat, and he turns away before he can spit cruelties. His anger is not for Hannibal, it is for the monsters that darkened the white stone of the paved streets, that smashed the fountains to dust and burned the trees. He says nothing for a long time, tense and shaking in his helplessness, before he turns to return to Vih’r, mounting her and commanding both dogs who follow him to stay.

He allows Hannibal to catch the reins as he passes, keeps his eyes forward and his jaw set as he swallows.

“I want to see, Hannibal, let me go.”

“No.”

“Hannibal!”

“You will heed me,” he says. “Or I will make you. What will you do? Hurl yourself into the flames to extinguish it? Already, there, you see the flames? Not knowing what troops remain inside pillaging? No.”

With his teeth set behind curled lips, he snares Will by the waist to drag him from his horse, and breathes against his hair as the boy shakes and wrenches in his grip.

“You are my home,” Hannibal tells him, heart hammering. “I will not lose you.”

Will has little care for who sees, has little care for who speaks, he squirms viciously in Hannibal’s hold, narrowly avoids dropping them both to the ground as he continues to struggle.

“And this city was mine!” Will cries, arms stronger, now, than when Hannibal had first taught him to wrestle, had first taught him to break free, but not strong enough. Never that strong. “This is my childhood that burns, Hannibal, every street and rough wall and garden, this was _my home_!”

Still he is held, until a cry, rough and loud pulls from his throat and peters into a wail of pain that Will feels to his bones. He does not stop his scratching, his twisting and sharp elbows back against unrelenting metal. He does not stop his struggle. And he knows that there is nothing they can do. That not even with a thousand men could they retake the city now, and it pulls at him, at every sinew and heartstring.

“Why won’t you let me see,” Will sobs. “Why won’t you let me try -”

“Because the thought of it alone is driving you to this, Will. I cannot lose you. I will not.”

And Will goes limp, arms tight against his chest and eyes closed and teeth bared in pain as his knees grow weak and Hannibal pulls his weight up to hold him. He swore. He swore that he would be his strength when Will had none. He swore that he would guide him. Care for him. Love him, always, and it would be a cruelty now to let him go.

Hannibal will take the blows. The curses. The spite that may last long after the fires have died. He will take it all and carry that, too, if he must, to save Will from where, blind, he would hurtle himself to destruction.

Better alive and angry than dead.

Better breathing still to grieve, than to be among those who no longer can.

“I have seen,” Hannibal whispers to him in Neuri, eyes closed, as in jerks and laxity Will struggles and falls, weeping. “I have seen my home burn. I have seen my family butchered. I will not let you do that to yourself, peacemaker. I would try to reclaim your city myself, alone, before I allowed you to bear that burden.”

Another weak sound and Will just hangs against him, his teacher and husband and best friend. His general. He does not think of his home, with its wide pillars and open corridors. He does not think of his father’s library, or the couches in it that Will had lain on for hours, reading, devouring information on history and philosophy and politics and war. He does not think.

He tries only to breathe.

His fists unfurl to grip against Hannibal’s armor, cool, still, beneath his palm, and Will pants against etched bronze until his breathing eases to slow, shuttered sighs. He does not speak again when he feels fingers in his hair. He does not heed the men that murmur walking by, scared themselves for their own city, some as angry as Will had been, others distraught, others still resigned and silent. He cares little, even, for when Yelp nuzzles against his hip, wheezing, determined to take the pain away, though after a moment more, he does drop his hand to his shaggy head.

Will’s face is blotched red when he raises it, tears slick on his cheeks and rimming his eyes. He raises them only when he has allowed himself to slow his heart, leans into the hand that presses to his face in an attempt to soothe and comfort. He does not blame Hannibal. He does not blame the Gods. He just swallows and parts his lips with a soft exhale.

“I will face them at Plataea, then,” Will murmurs, sniffing gently and raising his chin, forcing his shoulders to straighten.

Hannibal strokes a thumb across his cheek. Beneath his eye, he wipes away the tears shining hot. And then the general raises his own chin, despite how much he wants to take the boy with him, back to the safety of the farm, far from the city at their back. He spreads his shoulders. He shouts, to move for Plataea, what soldiers remain who will fight to save their country.

At the belt of his general’s voice, Will feels taller. Steadier. Braver. And he lifts his head as proudly as Hannibal himself holds his.

Somehow, always, men like them have found the strength to do so.

And Hannibal feels it fill him now, again, as he meets Will’s eyes.

“We will face them together.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Soon,” Hannibal promises, slipping a curl of hair behind Will’s ear. “Soon we will have calm and quiet, in one place or another. We will spend our days in sunlit fields and vast libraries, in olive groves and the sea. Soon, peacemaker, you will have your namesake again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) for her brave beta-reading!

_Strength, peacemaker._

Those words only were left with Will, once he found the ground beneath his feet and pulled his head high again. A stroke of fingers across his cheek, reassuring him of what Hannibal knows he holds inside him - an absolute faith that Will can hold himself together through this.

He can.

He will.

He watches Hannibal go, dogs loping behind, wheeling his horse towards the soldiers waiting for someone to lead them. His voice carries, long and far above the rising din from the city smoldering behind them. Armor flashing in ripples across decoration and dents, dulled where the shine of metal has been worn down, glinting where the sun strikes across it bright, Hannibal sits tall. There is no memory of Thermopylae now but as a rallying cry - _for the three hundred, for Athens, for Hellas_ \- and the men gather their things into formation to follow.

Messages are scribbled and sent, in every direction of the city-states that remain beneath the onslaught of Persia. To Sparta and Corinth, to Boetia and Megara, to the ships at Salamis to make Themistocles aware that they will converge at Plataea.

“Boeotia?” Will asks, as Hannibal and the hounds return to him to ride. “But that’s - it’s fallen -”

“There is a new name we seek,” Hannibal tells him, eyes distant, now, unfocused as he works through the information shared with the remaining strategoi. “Mardonius. This is his work,” he says, and he does not look back to Athens. “He has been left to take the land, in his own time.”

“And Xerxes?”

Hannibal shrugs, and works his lips together in thought. He doesn’t know. No one does. The information is scattered and incomplete, he’s lucky that they’ve pieced together what they have. There is talk of immense victories in the sea, Themistocles’ enormous fleet once looked upon as folly now the strongest force they have against Persia.

“He left his general, here,” Hannibal says again. “And he is camped at Plataea. Already the remainder of Sparta’s army rides to join us. We will not wait for them to route us out. We will go to them instead.”

Will nods, and though his shoulders remain straight, his chin high, he does turn to Athens. He watches. He remembers. He fosters that tugging ache, that nausea and childish want to help and heal and return things to how they were. He fosters the anger and lets it grow, uncoiling like a wild beast within him, slow and languid and purring in its need for blood, and he promises it Mardonius.

Then he turns away, a sharp whistle to the dogs who come immediately, heeling to his side as they ride.

He is side by side with Hannibal in this, as well, never giving commands but following them to encourage those unsure, those wavering as he did, as he hopes he does not, again, to follow as well. War strips the pride from men, strips the cocky surety the camp had seen grow, like moss on a rock. No more is Will teased, no more is he tormented. The men that once did, now call his name not in cruelty but to pass a message, to offer water, to ask advice he does not have.

In truth, Will aches for sleep. He aches for a night, even if just once, of rest with his general, of the slow and intimate joining of their bodies, no rush to make the hours, but taking their time, working up voices that would pierce the sky as loud as any cry in battle.

He wants it, as much to comfort himself as to fortify his general. A reminder of what they are, and how strong they are, before they show it with sword and spear and axe to the filth that has smeared their country's name under ungrateful boots.

Yes, Will thinks, the anger is much easier to tame when he can offer it such spoils to come, and it can feed off them and not tear his flesh instead.

The thud of hooves across the land becomes a solid wave of sound, lulling Hannibal into a comfort that should not be his to claim. Not with the remnants of Athens’ army riding towards near-certain death, not with the fortified outpost at Plataea awaiting them, and Persia’s lingering legions rested and fed. But there is wasted energy in unhappiness, wasted strength in dread. And if he does not show strength, now, as he told his peacemaker to do, then who will? When the men are tired and fearful, fighting for a home they’ve just seen razed, to whom else can they look to bolster their will?

It will take another day or two to reach Boeotia, a day or two beyond that for Sparta to reach them and double their numbers, if not triple. They will be fearless, then. There is nothing left to fear that they have not faced already, and if death awaits them, as it does all men, they will face it with honor.

Only when Will is half-asleep in the saddle, the other men equally tired, does Hannibal call a stop to the procession. They have not seen opposing forces - they have not seen anyone, among the hills and mountains and fields. They are, in their world, alone together, and Will startles to wakefulness at the brush of Hannibal’s hand over his own as he turns back to tell the men to set camp for the night.

Will takes the dogs and scouts forward for water. The place they ride is not barren, and the swifter ride allows Vih'r to stretch her legs and Will to wake up properly. The dogs enjoy the exercise, tails high and tongues lolling when they finally come upon water and Will swings the water skins from over his shoulder before dismounting.

He leaves the animals to sate their thirst and kneels to cup his hands in the cool water. He washes his face and lets the water drip from his hair before he starts to fill the skins. Beyond, the sky is growing bruised with the beginnings of sunset and Will meditates on it, eyes glazed and body aching. He moves only when Snow nudges his heavy head against Will’s shoulder, nearly upsetting him into the stream, and, laughing, Will hefts the full water skins back to Vih'r, tying them to the saddle.

He lets the dogs run ahead on the way back, giving Vih'r her space, though she is as tired as he, and they return at a trot to the camp already set up before them. The water is set for anyone who wishes for it, and Will rides back to his general. He dismounts, leading Vih'r to the herd of the other horses and removes her saddle for her to ease into rest as she pleases. With a soft snort and a nudge against her boy, the horse goes, and Will turns to go the opposite way.

"Drink," Will says, holding out the skin for Hannibal to take, stepping close as the man runs his fingers through damp curls and tugs them gently straight. Will leans to kiss soft against the general's pulse, fingers up to work his armor off, to set it carefully aside for him.

A moment of peace stolen, a breath spared, Hannibal sighs against Will’s brow. He tilts his cheek against him, knowing they’re watched, knowing that here at the end of their world no one will bother looking a second time. The camp is quiet, but for the sound of setting up tents and fires, only soft murmurs passed between the men.

Hannibal tugs Will’s hair a little more, and meets his lips, kissing once before he takes down a pull of water instead. Will tugs loose sweat-damp leather from his general’s shoulders, catching the breastplate as it splits in two to remove it from his chest. With a gentle gaze, Hannibal stands still, to let his peacemaker tend to him, relishing the brush of little fingers over his arms as they free him from his bracers, savoring the sight of Will on one knee as he unlaces his greaves.

How many nights they have left alive is not known to Hannibal. The gods rarely see fit to share such knowledge. Perhaps a stray arrow might take him, a blade in Boeotia, an illness, a failing heart in old age - it doesn’t matter. He will go when it is his time to go, and in the meantime, he will not waste these mortal nights for propriety.

“Eat,” Hannibal tells him, touching beneath Will’s jaw to lift his chin. “And then join me in my tent.”

Will’s smile comes swift, a brief flicker of his lips and his eyes narrow in that familiar warmth that hadn’t kindled since the farm, since the early weeks of camp before Thermopylae. He swallows and nods, understanding and content to play coy as Hannibal lets him go and Will stands.

He sees to the dogs first, makes sure that they eat something, that they find a place to curl up so as not to bother him and Hannibal for several hours. He goes to see Vih’r again, stroking her and feeding her sweet grass from the side of the road that the horses wouldn’t reach. He praises her, promises a good run to tire her out the next day, if not then then the next. Only after that does he seek food for himself and Hannibal. More dried meat and hard bread. He yearns for berries and soft cheese. He yearns for warm goat’s milk and fish.

He yearns for home.

And that yearning brings him to the closest thing he has to that, the one thing that defines it for him.

Quietly, Will sets his armor down by the entrance to the tent and shivers in the cool evening as sweat dries his tunic to him. So bared, on silent feet, he lifts the flap of the tent and steps within.

Hannibal leaves his arm across his eyes, but his smile curves beneath. He does not need to ask to know the sound of Will’s bare feet against the soil. He does not need to look to know the scent of him, sweat and horses and his own sweetness, like ripe figs, beneath. Instead, eyes closed, he extends his hand until slender fingers curl around it, and Will sets the bundle of food aside to slide atop the general’s sleeping pad. Tired legs spread shaking into a stretch over Hannibal’s hips, mounting the man as he does a horse, and only then does Hannibal lower his arm to set both hands over Will’s bare thighs.

His thumbs stroke across the once-soft skin inside, now hardened by the wear of riding. Stronger. Firmer. Will’s muscles flicker movement under his touch and Hannibal runs his hands higher beneath his boy’s chiton, sighing contentment when he grasps the ridges of his hips.

“I have missed you, peacemaker.”

Will smiles, heart fluttering as it had the first time he had asked Hannibal to share his bed, the first time he had wrapped his legs around him and arched up against the wall to press closer to the seeking kisses and hot hands. It is like breathing again, after so long holding it. Will eases more weight onto the man beneath him.

“I have been busy,” Will replies, voice soft, as he draws a hand up the warm fabric over Hannibal’s chest. He traces the tattoos beneath from memory, before settling his palm flat over Hannibal’s heart. “I have been following the words of a wise general, his commands and his advice, and I have learned.”

Hannibal’s smile widens a little, eyes still closed, at ease to simply touch and be touched in return. “Not a fat one?”

“Not in the slightest,” Will grins. “He’s very handsome.”

“He must be the luckiest man in Greece,” Hannibal considers, “to have such a capable student and brave soldier think of him so.”

Will bites his lip and spreads his legs further, until they are the length of Hannibal’s own, on either side of him. He rests his head on the man’s chest and listens to his heart, eyes closed now, too. “He is not the luckiest man in Greece,” Will says, teasing fingertips across the folds of Hannibal’s chiton.

“No?”

“No,” smiles Will. Hannibal breaks into a grin, brief, and then quickly stills it to keep the game at play between them.

“Who is then?”

“I am, of course,” Will laughs, just a little sound, just a slight sigh but it fills Hannibal as if Will’s breath were the only air that might fill his lungs. He sinks his arms around him, cradling him close, and finally tilts his head to regard him.

“Soon,” Hannibal promises, slipping a curl of hair behind Will’s ear. “Soon we will have calm and quiet, in one place or another. We will spend our days in sunlit fields and vast libraries, in olive groves and the sea. Soon, peacemaker, you will have your namesake again.”

Will smiles, that same, warm thing that floods his face with light, that pinkens his cheeks and shows just the barest flash of white teeth. Slowly, he slides higher up Hannibal’s body, knees pressing closer against the man’s thighs as he levers himself up to kiss him, slow and deep, fingers splaying over his bearded cheek, sliding higher to his hair to work free the tight elaborate braid into loose strands.

His hair is greying, Will notes. He wonders how long it has been and he has not seen, imagined it silver in sunlight, the shimmer of armor and sword. He has never seen it as age, he has never seen it as a sign of weakness, a sign of slowness, of decay.

His knees shift higher up again, and Will lets Hannibal’s hands slowly bare him, palms warm against his thighs, over the swell of his ass and up over his smooth back, drawing the tunic with them. Will breaks the kiss only to allow the cloth to be pulled from him and tossed away, leaving him entirely bare for his general to look his fill and touch as he wishes.

Will’s smile widens and he stretches himself pretty and wanton over the man beneath him, ducking his head to press hot kisses through the fabric of Hannibal’s tunic, down his broad chest and over taut stomach, crawling back as his lips seek lower still. Hannibal’s knees twitch and raise and Will sets his own little hands against his thighs to draw them up, to feel the fabric gather against his wrists as he moves it higher, up, to reveal Hannibal’s cock, semi-hard and curved up against his stomach, dark and thick and familiar.

Parting his lips with his tongue, Hannibal sighs and settles back. He rests one arm over his head, against the oiled canvas tent. The other hand tugs loose the strand of leather holding Will’s braid in place, and works loose his curls, thick with the day’s sweat, warm and soft. He stills when Will sighs against his length, shivers when he feels himself stiffen more from the heat, cock raising as if to seek Will’s lips.

He feels them, soon enough. Damp kisses along the vein that throbs in time with Hannibal’s pulse, a touch of pink tongue-tip across the swelling head. He wants to feel the hot pressure of Will’s mouth around him, he wants to see Will’s lips flushed and scarlet from sucking. And yet he is glad for even this, for whatever Will gives him, made so full inside as to burst just at the sight of his beloved so near to him.

There is no greater reward in this life or any after than to look on Will with so much love that it hurts, and to know that Will feels the same.

Soft lips and soft sighs, and then Will does take him into his mouth with a quiet moan, eyes closing as he does, as he rubs his tongue against him, sucks softly to feel Hannibal arch up for more. Will takes his time taking him deeper, suck by delicious suck, lips growing redder, tongue spreading wider, and Will’s entire body relaxes into this. He worships Hannibal’s body, worships every inch his tongue and fingertips can reach, as his hands push the tunic up higher and Hannibal’s hips leave the pad once more.

Will slips one leg to the ground, flat, to reach higher, to continue the teasing tonguing and hot, wet pressure that sends sounds from Hannibal’s throat. Gentle, for now, low in their deep pleasure, and always enough for Will. He flicks his eyes up, to look up the length of Hannibal’s body, bruised and scarred and inked. He knows it by heart, would know, blind, where each creature lives on his skin and how it breathes as he does, he would know without aim how to kiss just over his heart, would know where to touch to have him coil and bend.

Will swallows him deeper and buries his nose against the wiry dark hair at the base of Hannibal’s cock, moaning when his body responds as Hannibal’s does, shivering and tensing, cock trembling between his legs as he sucks so beautifully against Hannibal’s.

Hannibal breathes praise to him, prayer and adoration, blessings after blessings, in coarse Neuri. Will skims back the skin from around the head of Hannibal's cock, curls his tongue around the tender skin to wet it more and savor the beads of slick that swell and spill across his mouth. He seeks between his own legs, tugging slow to ease and rile his own pleasure, and Hannibal groans low at the sound of skin on skin, the little sucking noises, the way Will hums -

"Please," Hannibal asks him. He catches Will's chin with his fingers and his cheeks darken at the sight of his cock slipping free of Will's wet lips, threads of spit joining them. Instead, he pulls Will up to his mouth and tastes him again, licking his mouth clean, pressing his tongue inside, breathing together.

Firm fingers sink into Will's thighs to drag him higher, seated high over Hannibal's belly. His cock probes Will's entrance, alongside fingers made quickly damp in Hannibal's mouth between their kisses. They slip inside slow, one and then the other, stretching him more quickly than they need, stretching him as quickly as he can, both driven by want to be joined whole again.

He sighs obedience against Will's mouth when little hands frame his bearded jaw. Watching with hooded eyes, as if looking on the face of a god, Hannibal whispers that he loves him, and rolls his hips upward.

Will’s lips part but he makes no sound, just lets his eyes close as his lips widen on a smile, as white teeth snare the bottom one and he folds the other atop. He is tight, tense in his pleasure and beautiful in his display. He sets the heels of his hands against Hannibal’s chest as though to hold him down, arches and stretches lovely above him.

“You are beautiful,” Will tells him, Neuri curling against his tongue as he breathes against Hannibal’s mouth. He settles back further, deeper, and shivers his relief in it. “Atop your horse you are as a god, Hannibal, terrible and just, and I cannot look away.”

Little hands snare in his hair and Will arches Hannibal’s neck back to suck marks against his jaw, uncaring if others see the next day, uncaring if others know. Never once has Will been ashamed of their love, never once has he taken the cruel jests and words to heart. He is joined, body and mind and soul to this man, before the eyes of Will’s gods and Hannibal’s. He will cry Hannibal’s name proudly whether in victory or release.

He hooks his foot against Hannibal’s thigh and lifts it, turning them on the sleep pad until his back is to it and Hannibal is above him, Will’s fingers seeking quick and sharp across his back. He feels alive, with him, knows that his heart pumps and his lungs burn and his muscles tense, he can feel it. Alive and living and free, as the man above him is. And Will knows he will give him everything, in this lifetime and in others, always.

Hannibal thrusts sharp and Will’s gasp is pulled from him, loud and breathy and pleased, melting into a laugh as Hannibal does it again and Will puts voice to his pleasure, now, and moans. Where the stretch was hurried, the slick heat of Will’s mouth all too brief, now Hannibal moves languid, hips rocking to bury himself to hilt until Will’s breath leaves him, drawing back just as slow. A deep, slow taking, as Hannibal lowers himself from his hands to his elbows to feel their hearts beat together.

Not once does he close his eyes, and deny himself the sight of Will’s ecstasy under him. Not once does he resist chasing parted lips to kiss and taste his sweetness. Not once does he hold back when Will’s fingernails dig into his skin as if to take him further inside and make himself more full.

Hannibal tilts Will’s head aside with a kiss, following the scruff along his blushing cheek - every bit as youthful and lovely as he was when they met - until he sighs against Will’s ear. “You make me brave,” he tells him. “I fight and I lead for you.”

Will’s breath hitches, hands coming up to frame Hannibal’s face, to gently hold him down against his neck as he peppers it with kisses and breathes promises after. Will shivers and draws up his knees, hooking his legs - strong, lithe things, now, he is nothing of the child before - over Hannibal’s hips to curl tighter, pull closer, hold on.

“The luckiest man in Greece,” Will breathes again, fingers tangling in Hannibal’s hair, turning his head enough to kiss him, as they make love, slow and deep, in a camp before war. A place Will had never thought he would be, had hoped he would never be, and now knows he would rather be nowhere else but in Hannibal’s arms, here.

“I will honor you,” he promises. “With every breath I take until I take my last.”

Another whimper, Will uncurling to press his heels to the ground, to push as though to get away from the blissful torment Hannibal inflicts on him, with every deliberate thrust. Will laughs, helpless and breathless and little, and smiles up at his general, at the man who is so much more than that, to him.

“More,” he begs. He bites his lip and tilts his head back, sinews stark against his neck, when Hannibal rocks shallowly into him, hand curled in Will’s hair, just to watch him come apart. “ _More_.”

Hannibal laughs, the first time he’s freely done so in weeks, months, years maybe. It feels like he never has before, or perhaps only so long ago that the sound of it has become foreign to him. And always with Will, always with this sweet and stubborn young man who moves him with a look and brings him gratefully to his knees.

He gives him everything. Long pushes rocking far inside of him, shallower ones that curve just right to make Will’s hands tighten and tremble against him. Shifting to one elbow, Hannibal runs a calloused hand between them, through the slippery puddle on Will’s belly, to stroke his cock. His own voice raises, low rumbling sounds like thunder and louder cries of Will’s name, only that, there is no other word as sacred that Hannibal has ever known to proclaim to all the worlds.

With a stiffened shudder he spills into him, driving deep, watching as Will’s lips part on little gasps as heat spreads slick inside him. A part of Hannibal to keep inside him, safe and loved, a sensation of being stretched that he will feel on horseback again the next day and blush to imagine his fierce general’s love for him. His eyes roll closed and a leg kicks out, toes curling, and he releases in viscous pulses over Hannibal’s fingers.

His little body shudders beneath Hannibal’s weight, up against him when the man bends to press his lips to Will’s and take his breath from him. Will stretches and coils in one smooth motion, knees up and hands wrapping around Hannibal’s broad shoulders and tugging his light hair. He kisses Hannibal until his lungs burn, until the corners of his eyes do and he laughs when he lets him go, nuzzling against him, gasping softly when Hannibal pulls from him to just lay instead.

Will turns to his side, hand out to trace over sharp cheekbones and parted lips, over crooked nose and gentle against eyelids that close with a sigh for Will’s blessing.

“Look at you,” Will breathes, drawing his hand away so Hannibal can open his eyes to him, smiling with a gentle tension just beneath his own. “I love you.”

Hannibal listens when, as if on cue, there is a snuffling at the flap of the tent, and a wheeze. Big paws thump across the dirt, and Hannibal grunts, grinning, as Yelp flops against his back, Snow settling nearby. Touching his forehead to Will’s, he touches another kiss to the corner of his mouth. Another.

Endless.

Always.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him, lifting a hand only to slide Will’s hair back and reveal his eyes. It feels like home, for just a moment, and a quiet pain fills the spaces between Hannibal’s ribs. It is a wonderful feeling, longing and relief all at once, gratitude for even an instant of that comfort. “And I think, perhaps, we are both very lucky to have found each other.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, he works in parts of the earth around them, long blades of grass braided in alongside the silver-grey of Hannibal’s hair, lithe little sapling twigs forming almost a second helmet beneath the one Hannibal will wear. Will works quickly but he does not rush, murmuring in Neuri that they are grateful for the land and its kindness to them, that they will see these Persians give it the blood and respect it deserves on the field. Will dedicates Hannibal’s name to the sky and to the sea, to the fires behind them, the earth beneath. When he is done, Will ducks his head to kiss against the back of Hannibal’s neck, and dedicates him to the gods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) for her brave beta-reading!

Clouds threaten a storm above them as Hannibal’s army crosses into Boeotia, and the cool is welcome. Breezes push the trees to sway against the road as they ride by, push against their sweaty hair as the soldiers drop their heads back with quiet sighs and pray for rain. They have learned well to conserve water, but the humidity is stifling them, exhausting their horses. The hounds laze on the back of a cart once more, Yelp’s tail dragging over the uneven ground and the giant dog uncaring.

Will rides at Hannibal’s side unless he is conferring with the strategoi, no time to stop but plans yet to be made. When he goes, Will rides alone, behind the cart to watch his dogs, and takes in the countryside.

Greece has always seemed immense to him, an entire world on the islands that sit like pearls in the middle of the Aegean. And yet the more they ride, the more he realizes that he has seen none of it. Nothing at all beyond Athens and the farm and its ocean beyond. He wonders if he ever would have, had the war not come, laments that perhaps his youth and ignorance would have kept him still, untraveled and not knowledgeable of the villages they pass through now.

He wonders what life is like, here, when the homes are not empty and the land not left untended.

He wonders how many boys like him left farms like his own for an unknown future. He wonders how many of them were sent with the army to fight, how many went to the ships. He thinks of Stesilaus and wonders whether he went with Themistocles to the boats, or if he was sent away, safe and sound, to wait for him.

He smiles, thinking that his friend would not so easily be pushed aside, after being so hard won.

It rains on the second day of their ride, cool and welcome, and Will tilts his head up and stretches his tongue to catch the sweet drops against it, arms spread languidly, heavy drops hammering against his armor, pounding at his chest as though tempting his heart to join the same rhythm.

Hannibal watches, riding nearer, but does not disturb. He smiles, softly, to see the cascade of water slicking clean his beloved’s skin, weighing down his hair and easing his throat from the dry dust of travel. The rain is a blessing. The boy is a blessing. Hannibal lifts his eyes to the clouds overhead to thank whichever deity - his own, or that of Greece’s storms - for this gift, and that it does not seem to be worsening to more.

When finally Hannibal’s horse nips at Vih’r’s withers, and they duck their heads together as if conspiring, Will runs a hand down his face to clear it of water and looks to him. “It’s good luck, isn’t it?”

“It’s good in many ways beyond luck,” agrees Hannibal.

“Do you remember before -”

“Of course,” Hannibal answers, without hesitation. How could he forget the night that Will took Hannibal’s gods into himself? That he accepted the man and his blood and history so entirely as his own. Lightning split the sky like spear-strikes and they rubbed each other dizzy on a pile of wolf-skins. The thought shivers the man, and as he rides alongside, he smooths Will’s now transparent chiton, sticking to his thigh.

The soldiers, too, seem lighter-hearted for the rain. Laughter spills among them, and spreads. There is anticipation in the air, electric. The rumble of hooves great in number now that Sparta has joined. They are the storm that approaches, and it is as welcome as kin to share its water with them.

When they slow to a stop, atop a large hill overlooking a flat, wide swath of land, Hannibal announces arrival to Plataea. No one asks but confusion shows on many faces before Hannibal points out the thin trickle of smoke rising above distant trees. It seems very far away, almost invisible set against the grey sky, and the field below welcoming and wide, lush and green. A copse of trees not far betrays a hidden river. There is no one but they, and all the men spanning in thousands down the hill behind.

“We camp here,” Hannibal decides, with stiff nods from the strategoi who carry in their own tongues the instructions to their soldiers. There are many that make the whole, Will notes, all with slight differences that define them. The Spartans in scarlet cloaks and tunics, as if born from blood, their hair worn long. The Corinthians with their strange helmets that cover all but the small circles of their eyes. The Athenians, his brothers, now.

Their number is immense once more, as it had been before Thermopylae. They spread across and down the mountainside, the way they came, not showing their vulnerable belly, and posting sentries where they can. Will no longer puts up a pretence of sleeping in his own tent, and instead sets up Hannibal’s for them both, as he and the strategoi meet in another to discuss their plan of action.

Fires are impossible to build in the rain, but rations are passed from man to man, anyone sharing who can spare. The Spartans turn their noses at Athenian food as the Athenians do at theirs, and after a while, the atmosphere becomes amicable, challenges called back and forth between the men to try one thing or another, bets set for certain ones to see how much they can eat to prove another wrong.

Will watches, he does not participate, but laughs the loudest when Yelp enters the fray and happily consumes everything on offer between the betting soldiers.

After that, the bets begin for what can tempt the animal the most, the large dog contentedly walking between men. He accepts strokes behind his ears and pieces of whatever they are willing to give him. No Athenians fear the beast now that they know his nature, the Spartans still wary but growing comfortable from their stoicism in watching the ungainly beast wheeze his joy at the game.

Snow keeps to Will’s side, always a more serious dog than Yelp, seemingly intent on protecting the boy from dangers unknown. Still, he takes food that’s palmed to him by Will, and sets a fluffy chin across Will’s thigh to finally settle. Will spares a glance to the tent in which the strategoi work, but just the one, before setting a hand on Snow’s head to watch Yelp try to snatch food offered from two opposing directions.

Among the games and challenges, boasting and bragging, there are - as ever - whispers of curiosity. It is a different tone than the hisses that before Thermopylae threaded behind Will’s steps like snakes. A different tone too from the near-mutinous dismay when Hannibal did not join Leonidas. One man, who was with them at the pass, with them in the skirmish after, whose name Will tells himself to make a point to learn, asks Will if he knows why they’re here, and not in the field.

“Better defense,” Will wagers, but even he isn’t certain why they’ve stopped so very far away from the Persians’ camp. “They can’t circle back on us this way, at least. We’re not exposed.”

“We’ll be exhausted by the time we march on them at this distance,” considers the man, and Will doesn’t argue. Neither does he doubt.

_I fight and lead for you._

_I will honor you._

And Will is glad he doesn’t know, after word has circled about the greedy goatherd that sold his country to the Persians by leading them through the back pass at Thermopylae. He spits at the thought of the traitor, he does not allow the man’s name to cross his thoughts. Better then that no one knows but the strategoi. Better then that no one can betray them.

He stretches his legs, unsettling Snow who grunts in doggish displeasure before splaying to his side, wet nosed pressed to Will’s knee. Will accepts a skin of wine from one of the other men and sighs as the heat eases through his throat and belly, down to tired legs. He will wait with the men and share their company until the strategon breaks for rest, and then join his general once more.

And the next night.

And the next.

Until the third morning when he finds Hannibal and Yelp gone from bed.

The rain came and went, heavy showers and gentle mist, cut between with sparks of bright sunlight. Now, it does not rain, and the sun is barely cresting the horizon. Will folds the blanket they share over his shoulders and around his body before stepping from the tent to seek his general. He finds him, crouched by one of the scraggly trees on the ridge, hands clasped relaxed between his knees as he watches, unmoving, the field below.

Will walks on his toes, the cold dew numbing his feet where he sets them, and moves to stand beside the man, wordless for the moment, as they both wait.

“It is too simple,” Hannibal finally tells him, repeating the words that had been theorized and debated throughout the camp night after night as they stayed their ground and made no move forward. “It is an open trap, and yet they should not be so naive as to imagine we would enter it.”

“Perhaps they hope for a break in weather,” Will suggests, smile curling his lips as he turns his head and looks down at Hannibal. “Perhaps they have grown lazy and fat, thinking Greece would fall as any other has before them.”

Hannibal hums, dire amusement and a challenge in the tone, and turns his head into the elegant fingers that stroke gentle nails down over his scalp.

“They have withdrawn, greatly, from the army that once held us,” Hannibal notes, and this Will knows is information for only his ears and those of the strategoi. “Xerxes has returned, with most of their soldiers, to Persei. He brought them all here to wipe through us, but their lands are too vast to leave so many in so small a place as Greece.”

Another curl of fingers tugs a shiver from the man, who grasps Will’s fingers to bring knuckles to his lips instead, breath pooling warm and grey against them.

“This is the army they have left to clean up after them, now that so many city-states have fallen.” Hannibal swallows, and touches a kiss to Will’s fingers. “I think they underestimate that the whole of our remaining military is behind us. It is a temptation.”

“If we outnumber them, what does waiting matter?”

“It matters in how they are armed. Greece rides her horses for travel and pleasure, not for battle. The Persians train theirs as you and I have our own - to ride them in full armor into war. It adds numbers in ways that men are not needed, to sweep through slow-moving phalanxes with a cavalry.”

“And they wish to see us throw numbers at them where they have stealth and speed,” Will concludes, turning his palm against the man’s cheek as Hannibal rubs against it like a cat. For a moment more, neither speak, both watching the silent field, inviting in its normalcy, calm and alive, like so many of those passed through by the war are not. Will thinks of the small copse of trees at their camp, how once it had been lush and full, how they had left it with barely a dozen skinny trees, grass stomped dead around it, river run silty with their endless parading through it.

He wonders who the field belonged to, which cattle grazed here, who watched over them in spring and summer.

With a swallow, Will sinks down to crouch beside Hannibal, lifting the corner of his blanket to offer to the man, though he is dressed where Will is quite obviously not. Will grins, brief and mischievous, and settles in against him, keeping his decency while sharing the warmth of the blanket.

“They will not move while we hold the higher ground,” Will reasons. “Arrows will find horses no matter their speed. But waiting this way will decimate us with boredom, not blood. Can we not trick them, as we did at Thermopylae? Can we not lead them into a corridor of their own making and take away their stealth and speed?”

At Hannibal’s other side, Yelp noses beneath the blanket, settles on his haunches and even seated, he is taller than Hannibal is, crouched. The general sets a hand to the dog’s head but with little attention, as Will’s words play through behind the man’s dark, distant eyes. He runs through possibilities, countless number in a matter of moments, and blinks slowly.

“What would draw them?” Hannibal ventures. He glances to Will, deferring now to the wisdom of his beloved.

Considering the question, Will chews his lip. “What motivates any army to action?” he answers. “Assured victory.”

“And so if they think us defeated already -”

“They will come to finish the job,” Will finishes. “Just like Xerxes told them to.”

Without another word, Hannibal sits into the grass as if stunned, unsettling boy and blanket and hound alike. He grasps Will by the back of his neck and drags him close to kiss, again and again, overflowing warmth in the heat of their mouths, breathless with gratitude. A laugh breaks the joining of their lips, and he shuts his eyes to nuzzle Will’s cheek.

“My peacemaker. I should call you general instead.”

“I would be honored, one day,” Will laughs, pressing close to Hannibal, hands covered in the blanket still as he touches his face. “To earn it as you did.” Another kiss, another soft breath. Will wraps the blanket around himself and sits on the grass opposite Hannibal, knees drawn up and toes tucked down to warm them.

“Another day?” Will asks, watches Hannibal gently shake his head.

“Several. We will make a show of our leaving. We will lure them, and they will come.”

Will folds his hands over his knees and presses his face to them, watching Hannibal with swelling pride, a heat in his chest he can barely contain, can barely describe as anything but extraordinary. Will loves him. He loves Hannibal so much. And Will would dedicate him to the Gods again if he thought it would spare Hannibal this battle, spare him others in the future.

Will knows it will not, just as he knows that he will meet every battle at Hannibal’s side.

Will pushes himself to stand, still chilled, being so bare in the early morning. Bending to kiss Hannibal again, he tucks a blanketed palm beneath his chin, lips tilting on a grin as Hannibal arches up against him and deepens the kiss.

“Tell them,” Will murmurs, smiling wider as his eyes narrow. “And then join me in my tent.”

“Remarkable boy,” Hannibal praises him, stealing another kiss. He pushes to stand, their lips still tangled together, and he slides his hands to Will’s bare hips to gather him closer. Let their soldiers see. Let the Persians watching across the way see. Let the gods and worlds and all in them see and know.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him, because with all there is to do on any day, he does not get to tell him enough. He knows Will knows but it doesn’t matter - his eyes light up bright as the sun glinting across the Aegean every time Hannibal says it.

It is Will who leans away first though, smile still wide as with an arched brow, he nods towards the tents. Hannibal inclines his head, hand over his heart, and bows low in deference before skimming a thumb across Will’s cheek and departing.

The plan is discussed and debated, but no strategoi thinks it wise to meet the Persian cavalry on open ground, and waiting longer than they must is a game the Greeks will surely lose. Their rations are enough, for now, but not for the length of weeks that the Persians could surely wait in their outpost. So the word is spread, known only to the strategoi and their taxiarhoi immediately beneath.

They will wait several more days, and then begin their retreat.

And Hannibal will spend every night of it beside his beloved, his peacemaker, his little general, in worship of him.

And so when the carts pull away, the horns blast to signal retreat, Hannibal watches as the look-outs from the Persian side immediately return to their outpost. A matter of hours, perhaps, before they arrive. A matter of hours for him to gather and gird himself. The sky threatens rain above but it does not fall, and the clouds cool the thousands who wait. It whips the grass across the field like waves, bends the trees, and at Hannibal’s side, Yelp huffs a high sound as if he, too, were readying himself for what’s to come.

The army has spread, enough that they will not be seen in their full number over the crest of the hill. The retreat continues in slow progression, carts shifted under shelter of trees once out of sight. Will crouches, watches the men mill together, knowing their orders, knowing their formations and waiting, like pacing dogs before a fight.

Will can feel their energy, can feel his own need to move, to do something. Above, the clouds roil in silence and Will watches them. He thinks of the fire, built so high it singed the leaves of the trees around it, he thinks of how he had felt entirely alive, entirely _other_ than himself. He thinks of the words Hannibal had murmured, the blood and wine mixed hot in a little clay bowl and smeared over his skin, thinks of how it had burned against him with more than just their shared heat.

Will stands, moving carefully past men and horses both to get to Hannibal. He presses his forehead to his shoulder until the man draws a hand up against the back of Will’s neck and gently holds him there.

“We need to ready ourselves,” Will tells him softly, smiling at the hum he receives in answer, knowing Hannibal did not understand.

“The men will -”

“- wait,” Will reminds him. “We all will. But _we_ ,” he sighs, shifting to rest his chin against Hannibal’s shoulder now, smiling at him when he turns to him. “Need to ready ourselves.”

Will raises his eyes to the grey sky and slips a hand down to fold his fingers with Hannibal’s, his other up to stroke his hair. He will weave it again, work twigs and leaves through it to dedicate themselves to the earth. He will paint his face, and dedicate his name to the gods.

The last great battle in which Hannibal fought was Marathon - not yet a general then, scarcely a soldier until he felt his body break apart and become something else entire. A whirlwind, a wave, a storm that in its wake left sundered armor and broken bodies. He has not lead, as general, into a battle such as this. Theory and strategy only, shared with the other generals. Practice to keep his body fit. He is nervous, in a peculiar way, not entirely unlike the first time Will drew himself into Hannibal’s bed. Anticipation and eagerness, apprehension and uncertainty. And in it all - 

“I have forgotten my own traditions,” he breathes against Will’s brow, eyes closing. A small smile appears, brief. “I am lucky I have you to remember them for me.”

Gathering Will’s fingers to his lips, he bids him wait. Snow stays with Will, Yelp trotting heavy and huge behind the general as he seeks within the camp. An empty oil pot, and a skin of wine. His own blade already on his hip and a handful of ashes. It will have to do. He will not risk going without.

He will not yield another moment with Will, that he might take as if from the Fates’ very fingers.

Will is watching the sky when Hannibal returns, fingers gentle where he has his arms crossed, pressing into the soft skin just above his elbows. He does not need to look to know his general is here, he just smiles, accepts the kiss pressed to his cheek before curling a hand up against the back of the man’s neck and turning to nuzzle him.

”Sit,” Will tells him, and smiles wider when Hannibal does, without question, without commentary. Will moves to kneel behind him, fingers working the strands of his hair carefully free of their original braid, combing through his hair as it fans out against Hannibal’s broad back. Will begins to braid it as he does every morning, deft fingers and even breathing. It is almost meditative, slipping strands carefully together, turning and twisting them, careful to secure them with nothing more than another fold and another pattern.

Slowly, he works in parts of the earth around them, long blades of grass braided in alongside the silver-grey of Hannibal’s hair, lithe little sapling twigs forming almost a second helmet beneath the one Hannibal will wear. Will works quickly but he does not rush, murmuring in Neuri that they are grateful for the land and its kindness to them, that they will see these Persians give it the blood and respect it deserves on the field. Will dedicates Hannibal’s name to the sky and to the sea, to the fires behind them, the earth beneath. When he is done, Will ducks his head to kiss against the back of Hannibal’s neck, and dedicates him to the gods.

Hannibal listens to every word, and every blessing, and in silence meets them with his own thanks - for their lives, for the battle ahead, for the grace the gods have shown them both and for his beloved. He gathers his fingers to bring to his lips, and turns to face Will.

Soldiers watch in passing, some lingering but in silence to watch as Hannibal mixes together the wine and ash until it thickens. A slip of thumb against his own blade joins blood to the paint he creates, willing - always - to sacrifice himself to protect his boy. With murmured prayers that hearken back to the wild storm atop the cliffs where they became wolves together, he stirs it all with his fingers and leans to touch a kiss to Will before scooping the mixture.

He draws a stripe from Will’s brow to the end of his nose, and asks the gods to give him wisdom.

He draws a line beneath each eye, and asks the gods to give him clear sight.

He follows the curve of Will’s throat down to the hollow where the mixture pools dark, and asks the gods for every breath to steady him.

Symbols that Will knows and some that he does not glisten across his arms, for strength, and above his heart, fingers spreading as Hannibal asks in words the world has forgotten for the gods to keep him alive and whole. Will belongs to them, and he is theirs to protect.

Will belongs to him, and he is Hannibal’s to keep.

Blue eyes raise above the dripping smear of red and watch, moving between Hannibal’s own eyes dark already with the familiar trance this ritual pulls against him, like linen against his neck, soft and terrifying in its gentleness. Will’s own lips tilt, just a little, just enough, and he can feel his heart hammer now, thick in his ears, against his throat. He can feel the rippling of muscles as though his hackles are raising, as though rough fur - thick and heavy and warm - bristles as the clouds grow darker above, and the army grows closer below them.

Will takes the bowl from him, the knife to add his own blood to the ink as he paints Hannibal as well. He mirrors the marks upon him, sets his fingers against Hannibal’s temples and draws them back, painting his hair to the leaves already in it. Another dedication, another promise. A handprint smeared across Hannibal’s heart as Will promises to hold it, and keep it safe, binds his own to it so they will always beat as one.

Will leans in to kiss him only when his blood boils for the need to move, the same animal instinct back to rend and tear and protect, to fight anyone and anything for his mate. Will growls softly when he pulls back, grins when Hannibal’s eyes meet his again.

The last of the ink they use on the hounds, long lines between their eyes and up over their backs until the red fades to their mottled grey. Handprints against their hearts, as well, to keep them strong, to bring them back, on their paws to keep them swift-footed and sure. They bark - and wheeze - enthusiasm at the curious smell and energy prickling through the air. Just as much as the men feel it, the horses who stamp their hooves and throw their heads, the dogs too are tense with readiness, ears turned forward towards the sound of Persia’s approach.

Hannibal dresses Will before he dresses himself, as he did once in the safety of Athens, in the house of the polemarch. Finely formed bronze set to his chest and back, laced secure with leather straps. Greaves around his legs. Bracers to his arms, fingers skimming the soft insides of Will’s wrists. Will takes his helmet from Hannibal’s hands to set aside, to dress the general in turn. An older soldier, seeing them so painted, remarks to Hannibal in passing that paint is a far better choice than all the bloodletting he did on himself at Marathon, and Hannibal sends the man a crooked grin, arms held out for Will to lace his battered bronze in turn.

“You will see blood soon enough,” the general promises the man.

“Your own again, or Persian?”

Hannibal manages a laugh, not the joyous easy sound of nights before alone with Will in their tent, but a louder, brasher thing entirely. Will knows this sound, too, from reminiscing with the other soldiers who would come to visit them. A show of bravery in itself, a release of inner tensions.

“Theirs first,” Hannibal answers, “and then my own. Perhaps in victory I will mark in my skin one of their tusked monsters this time.”

“That would be a sight,” the man snorts, but it is not derision, perhaps a knowing born of past battles and past traditions. Everyone has their superstitions, on the battlefield. Will has seen men clean their swords daily, though they were just on a march with no need for them. He has seen certain others leave small offerings of food, herbs tossed into the fire, wine poured onto the ground. 

Will draws his fingers over Hannibal’s arm and gently squeezes, waits for him to lower it.

In armor, he looks frightening, a bloodied beast of a man, merciless and enormous and powerful. Will thinks of how his eyes had turned gold in the firelight, how his entire posture became that of a wolf as he gave chase and caught Will.

He will be magnificent.

Will presses his palm against the cold bronze, over the place he had smeared his handprint before, and looks up at his general. No words needed, here, as one smile fuels the other, as slowly their lips draw back to reveal white teeth, almost sharper, now, as a trick of the light.

“Fight well,” Will whispers.

Hannibal traces his knuckles down Will’s cheek, along his jaw and beneath his chin. He tilts his face upward, and strokes his thumb across Will’s bottom lip. His smile flickers a little wider, and he murmurs, “Keep your weight above your heels. Turn your hips first when you strike.” A pause, heart hammering, and Hannibal’s lips part on a sigh that he presses to Will’s brow. “Be safe.”

All their lessons come to this, as Hannibal takes Will’s helmet to set it to his head, until only the shadow of his smile and the light of his eyes shines through. He hardly recognizes him this way, pulled taut with well-honed muscles and beautiful armor, a war-hound at his side. Like a hero from the stories Hannibal heard as a child, men blessed by gods to fight and love and live beautifully. And yet, his, with Hannibal’s marks in his skin and his eyes still soft when their gazes meet.

“I love you,” Hannibal tells him, as he forces a step back to settle his own helmet on, his voice echoing beneath. “And after we make war as generals, we will make our peace.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No longer is he peacemaker, no longer is he the spoiled boy from Athens lounging in his couches and reading scrolls. No longer is he a little lost boy on a farm, trying to understand what he’s feeling and what his life means. No more. He is a wolf, a vessel for the spirits of the Neuri wolves of war. He is a beast and a creature of fur and fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/) for her brave beta-reading!

Voices rise. A cataclysm of sound coming towards their backs, carrying across field and forest, rhythmic as the thud of feet that seems to shake the ground beneath their own. Will thinks of the monsters of his childhood, the harpies and the sirens, whose throats alone could draw men to their death.

Still the Greeks retreat.

Armor glints. Over his shoulder, spanning out around the hill from which they recede, Will watches the approaching wave. Though he knows each cuirass, shield, and weapon belongs to a soldier, he cannot reconcile his mind to believe they are individuals when Persia appears as a wall closing in on them.

Still the Greeks retreat.

Tension coils. In every man around Will, in the general at his side, in the dogs that keep close enough to nearly trip them. Every soldier watches every other, and in silence wonders if they will die on their bellies, with arrows and spears in their backs. Will steels his jaw and does not look away from their path ahead, the thousands of men who span before him.

Still the Greeks retreat.

And still the voices bellow deafening.

And still the Persians’ armor scatters light across the ridge.

And still the Greeks clutch their weapons.

“Steady,” Hannibal calls out, and the command is echoed by the other strategoi, passed down the ranks from soldier to soldier. Some stop but are pushed forward by the others. Some are livid, hissing bitterness about dying like fleeing women. Some are calm, as placid as if alone on an evening walk. The first Persians broach the hill, their own commands shouted in a rough, twisting tongue.

Hannibal knows what it means.

“Hold! Shields!”

His voice echoes down the ranks, as in a wave the men move to stop. Will ducks, without pause, Snow beneath his shield held overhead and Hannibal beside with Yelp tight against his chest. The stiff plucks and deadly whistles of arrows rain down on them, and blessedly few fall. A pause. A Persian command. And Hannibal meets it.

“Now!”

The rush is intoxicating. Will does not know if he gives voice or if he just _is_ voice, the power of the cry running through him to the bones and deeper still. He runs alongside the men but does not see them, to him they are smears of color, a hum of sound as his heart pulses against his ears and he times his steps to it. Heavy breaths and hot blood beneath his skin and Will looks briefly to the sky, to the storm brewing above them there.

He thinks of the fire.

He feels his eyes turn gold and claws curl sharp as glass from his fingers.

No longer is he peacemaker, no longer is he the spoiled boy from Athens lounging in his couches and reading scrolls. No longer is he a little lost boy on a farm, trying to understand what he’s feeling and what his life means. No more. He is a wolf, a vessel for the spirits of the Neuri wolves of war. He is a beast and a creature of fur and fire.

His body responds on its own, no thought behind how to hold his shield or how sharply to swing his axe. He just holds. He just does. And immediately the world comes back to stark relief, men falling before and around him as Will fights his way forward, through, between, turning and shifting and ducking with a speed he never thought himself capable of.

Ahead of them, the men collide in clattering metal and screeching blades. Voices moments before filled with bravery splinter, others fortify. Everywhere is metal and flesh, bodies and bodies and bodies in every direction. And Hannibal, Will sees, Hannibal among the men, no longer a general but a soldier.

A warrior.

He watches a Persian driven to the earth beneath Hannibal’s spear, and Hannibal vanishes from sight to retrieve it. It’s only a moment of distraction, half a breath, before a shout from beside Will finds his shield above his head to deflect a sword aside. He pivots, weight on his heels and turning from his hips, and his axe feeds into the man’s side where his thin, strange armor does not cover. Snow is a flash of fur, as white as his name until blood spills across his muzzle and his teeth tear at the throat of the man that Will has felled.

Hannibal watches Will stand again and engage, hardly time enough to catch his breath, and smearing a hand across his mouth makes himself forget Will for now, just for now. Instead, he seeks with gore-smeared spear-point the back of a Persian atop a Corinthian, delighting in the parting of his weak cuirass beneath the point, laughing when the man coughs blood, tossing the whole thing away when the spear breaks.

More’s the better. He removes his sword instead. At his side Yelp stands snarling, enough in size and temperament that more than one Persian steers clear of them both to seek a fairer fight. In truth, Hannibal is grateful for the company. He speaks low Neuri to his dog, and follows when Yelp catches the ankle of an aggressor. The Persian spins, spear raised above the snarling hound, and the weapon clatters to the ground along with the arm that raised it.

Yelp releases his bite and wheezes a bark.

“You’re welcome,” Hannibal answers.

They are in the thick of it, now. No time to seek and find a familiar body, no time to move to them even if they did. Will whistles and Snow comes running, muzzle bloody and teeth bared in a snarl as he tugs a Persian soldier from his feet, the man’s cries of pain mingling with countless others, Greek and foreign alike, on the field.

Will moves like he will never tire, arms swinging his axe and using his shield as just as formidable a weapon. He can feel bone crack beneath his swing, flesh bruising and splitting, smell the acrid scent of iron and urine and bile as men come apart like toys on the field. He has no time for his own fear, he has no time to wonder why his arm is numb or where the smear of blood against his leg came from, he has no time to consider that he could die, at any moment, because if he did, if he stopped, even for a second, the aura would fade, this shield of his own belief bolstered by the ink against his face and the phantom cloak over his shoulders.

He cannot.

So he does not.

It reminds Hannibal of the sea, suddenly, the endless movement, the push and pull. But the water is weapons, the bay filled with blades, and in this ocean, at least, Hannibal’s feet can find the ground. He narrowly ducks a wild, glinting swing towards his eyes - in a moment of clarity, the sword’s passage sends cool air across his skin. No other sensation follows it, none of the cold pain of being cut or the hot spill of blood, and he wheels on limber legs to drive his sword up into the armpit of the man who turns again to face him.

Blood spills from the Persian’s lips, and with his pulse crackling like a wildfire beneath his skin, Hannibal leans to drag his tongue through the thick scarlet fluid. Just a taste, for now, just to tease his mind higher into a rhythm so quick that it becomes a sweet silence. Around the field, the shouts and cries and wails - the clatter and bang and shriek - it all quiets. Hannibal is as good as alone. His senses sting sharp. His nose fills with metallic musky blood and his tongue works the heat of life against it and he sees all at once everything and nothing.

He is more than human. He is animal, raw and powerful, fighting to defend home and mate and all within it. And he tilts his head back to release a howl, and with his voice join those around him - Greeks and Spartans, Corinthians and Megarans.

The voice of the storm.

The voices it brings with them. Of his father and mother and village, all warriors, all capable and strong. Their blood in his veins, their bones now his bones, their spirits guiding his sword into another man, through the one behind, cuts so deep they are delivered with inhuman strength, shield used as a battering ram to push aside and down and away.

The dog beside him kills as he does, as strong in his conviction to protect as to destroy, pulling any man away who tries to circle behind Hannibal and stab him in the back. Terrifying in his silence, brutal in his strength, as his brothers at home, on the farm, far away from the blood and gore and filth of war. Yelp latches on to another’s arm and rends, throwing the man against several others as he’s called to heel in a rough language unknown to anyone but one other on the field.

Haunches raised and teeth bared.

And it is hard to tell which of them is the wolf, now, which the man.

Sinews split and bones crack. The earth yields in sprays of mud made thick from the blood that dampens it. There was once a simple field here, lovely and quiet. There is now a battle, and when the participants are all turned to dust their ghosts will remain. The Persians will speak of their foolhardiness in leaving an army so small when Greece could have been so easily won. The people of Greece will toast to the men whose blood spilled to save her and drive out those who would subjugate them. Time spans slow and fast, all at once, as Hannibal brings down his sword against the join of a man’s neck and watches the layers of his throat peel like an onion beneath the humming blade. Every strike he bears witness to, every movement of the greater surge is felt.

This is what took Hannibal’s life from him as he once knew it.

This is what won him a new life to claim as his own.

Without this, he would not know Greece, still safe with his people in the far-away forests.

Without this, he would not know Will.

Greek and Neuri all at once, and twice now, driven by his home, by this nation and its allies.

Hannibal jerks his sword free of an invader’s ribcage and watches him fall. He will not forget his traditions now, and as he sits astride the man’s heaving chest, breath frothing into bubbles through the wound in his side, Hannibal will make certain that this man, too, knows the pain his country’s greed has caused.

Swift fingers jerk free the strangely stitched light armor from the man, who speaks in a language Hannibal does not care to know. He is begging, that much is clear, he is begging as Hannibal extends a hand towards Yelp to make the dog release the soldier’s arm. He is weeping, as Hannibal pulls free the man’s breastplate enough to crudely cut him apart.

The tears stop. The breath stops. But his heart is still warm when Hannibal squeezes around it like a ripe fruit and plucks it free of its branches. It splits ripe between his teeth, and the juice of it stains his chiton dark.

Around him, the hum of the roiling sea abates to single cries and harsh breathing. Whatever force the Persians had sent forward first had found themselves decimated. Whatever force remains pulls back to regroup, enough that the Greeks pull up a rough cry of victory, and do not follow. Not yet.

Hannibal’s eyes open and he arches his neck to look at the sky. The clouds hang heavy with water, darkening their day as though by a god’s anger. _Soon_ , Hannibal thinks, soon they will be free of this. He swallows, the tacky stickiness of blood coating his throat before he sniffs, harsh and quick, and pushes himself from the lifeless body beneath him.

A heavy body leans up against his own and he drops his hand to stroke through Yelp’s matted fur as the dog pants against him.

“Good boy,” he sighs. “Brave, stupid dog.”

Yelp’s tail beats delighted against a corpse behind him, once in a while striking metal enough to cause a hollow clang in the air. Around them, few move, those that do find a sword swift to their throats. Some soldiers kneel, mourning fallen friends with nothing more than fingertips to close their eyes, others look to the sky, praying for rain, for an end to this, or more of it as their hearts race.

Hannibal breathes, forces himself to, and then turns in a circle, sword loose in his hand, dragging on the ground and over fallen men. His eyes seek, one hand up to tug his helmet from his head, to set it to the ground so he can breathe, so he can _look_.

He does not see Will.

He feels his heart again only when it throws itself desperate against the cage of his ribs. No, Hannibal tells it, no. He is not gone. He cannot be. Hannibal would have felt it, he tells his heart, he’d have felt it as if the sun were swallowed whole and the sea rose to cover land. He’d have felt it as if fire broke spewing from the earth and the stars themselves clattered to his feet.

He would have felt if Will were gone from him.

Wouldn’t he?

Words fail. Rather than tell Yelp to find Will, Hannibal manages only a shaking sigh. The dog answers with a rasp and Hannibal clutches his sword tighter as he tries to find the direction from which he came. He tries to hear Will, but no sound comes. He tries to see him, but the land is strewn with the bodies of men both alive and fallen. He tries to breathe but only the scent of men broken into pieces fills his nose.

Frantic, Hannibal passes by countless dead and wounded in searching for sun-bright armor and dark curls, painted skin and blue eyes. He seeks out curls of bronze against a supple frame, he seeks his beloved, heart pitching faster for escape from his very body, and when hammering his chest does not give it exit, it hurts itself to his throat and Hannibal lets out a strangled cry - 

And in the distance, Hannibal sees a great white beast lift its head, and beside it a young man, resting on his weapon as if in repose.

His heart struggles harder, an aching tug, and Hannibal goes, uncaring for the obstacles in the way, uncaring for those that call his name or say his title, uncaring entirely for anything but the young man who pushes himself to straighten and turn, searching for Hannibal just the same as Hannibal is for him, upon hearing his name. Will hefts his axe and struggles to his feet, turning to seek for his general, for the man he had fought for.

The man he would have died for.

He didn’t.

Hannibal thanks the stars he didn’t.

Faster he comes, sword almost like a staff to step over corpses and barely living alike, until Will sees him, until he laughs, draws a shaking hand over his face and stumbles forward, exhausted. He reaches, fingers splayed and stretched, brows furrowing at seeing the blood over Hannibal’s face, at seeing it on his tunic, over his skin.

“You’re hurt,” Will calls. “You’re hurt!”

“No.”

The word is a growl, a wolf warning, not a man’s voice, and when he is close enough, Hannibal drops his sword and snares Will close, one arm around his shoulders, the other rough in his hair, tilting his head back with a cruel twist before his mouth collides with Will’s, harsh and biting in a devouring kiss.

It takes a moment, several, until the struggle registers, until Hannibal feels not soft fingers at his neck but nails, until Hannibal feels his breathing restrict from a fist against his throat, relentlessly pushing, until he tastes blood, fresh, sharp, his own, when the boy bites him and finally manages to shove him away.

“Don’t,” Will breathes, eyes wide, body trembling, shoving again when with a growl Hannibal steps up to him again. “Do _not_ , Hannibal. The battle is over.” Will’s words are sharp, his eyes narrow, and then he blinks, and just as quickly he is Will again, he is Hannibal’s beautiful boy, his beautiful peacemaker.

“Come back to me,” he sighs, turning a hand held out in defense to be palm up, brown with dried blood and muck, fingers gentle again for Hannibal to take.

The ones that snatch them are unyielding, gripping the boy as the man does his sword, and he drags Will against him. Beside them, the dogs greet each other. Around them, decimation. And Hannibal has no mind but for the battle, no care but for his beloved held crushing tight as their breastplates collide.

“Hannibal -”

Another kiss, searing hot, to claim again what’s his. Another kiss, despite how Will struggles with hands against Hannibal’s shoulders. He only relents when he chooses to, he does not yield to any but himself and Will.

“My Will,” sighs Hannibal, voice rattling feral from his throat. He kisses his cheek, down his neck, running hands over whatever flesh is not covered by bronze, to feel that Will is still whole. He turns Will’s head aside to suck at his throat, leaving a smear of blood across it, and he grasps Will’s hair to bend his head back and bring their eyes to meet.

“We sent them fleeing,” Hannibal snarls, lips curled in a menacing grin around bared teeth. “We won this, it is our victory, we broke them -”

“Stop,” the boy hisses, teeth bared and eyes wide with both anger and panic at seeing Hannibal this way, at seeing him so far gone to the monster within him, so far swallowed by its bloody maw. Will doesn’t struggle, but he does not relent to more touches, does not relax to kisses. When next Hannibal speaks, he lashes out enough to catch his jaw with a soft fist, jarring Hannibal enough that for a moment he is still.

“You are not yourself,” Will tells him, and then stops. Because he can see how untrue his words are. He can see how alive this makes Hannibal feel, how powerful and strong. And though he is a warrior more beautiful to behold than any other on the battlefield, Will had not imagined that he would get such carnal joy from this as he does pressing Will to bed and spreading his legs.

He did not imagine, because he did not want to see it.

“You enjoy this,” he breathes, and it is those words, of all, that seem to bring Hannibal back to himself, that have his eyes blinking back the gold of wolfish hunger and seeping forth, instead, the warm chestnut Will adores waking up to. The man beneath the wolf. He swallows, a thick and heavy sound, and parts his lips, eyes down to the blood over Hannibal’s lips, how it has run down his chin and throat and dried.

Will’s sigh shivers between them and he gently shakes his head.

“I can accept,” he whispers. “I can accept this man who gets joy from the slaughter of deserving men, if you are just as true, and just as real as you are to me.” Will’s eyes seek Hannibal’s again. The man he fell in love with, the man he has given his heart to.

Hannibal’s mouth is dry, sticky with blood, threads of muscle still between his teeth. He swallows, and ducks his head. Touching it to Will’s brow, he lifts a gentler hand to stroke shaking down his cheek, as without kindling to fuel a fire, it dies to smoldering embers. A cruel dousing in some ways, but without it, Hannibal would have claimed Will as he claimed the lives of so many men, rough and unyielding.

He knows he is a terror at war, a frightening thing half-man and half-beast.

He knows how the men looked at him after Marathon, with respect and fear both.

And the thought that Will would resent him, would cringe away and fight him off - Hannibal’s jaw still aches with the memory of it, and he releases a sigh. The sudden cold beneath his skin tugs a shudder from Hannibal, and he snuffs the fire.

“I fight for you,” Hannibal says. He closes his eyes, numbing quickly to the sounds around them, to the feel of anything but Will’s heat against his own. “You, for me. And together -”

“For our home,” Will reminds him.

Hannibal manages a smile, as they stop to breathe among the fallen.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Fight hard, general," Will smiles, words soft and fond, and so gentle. He brings Hannibal's hand to his lips and presses a harsh, hard kiss against battered knuckles. "I will find you in the field."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Endless thanks to [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com) for amazing beta-reading and feedback!

As the Greeks retreated, moments, hours before, now they advance on the fleeing Persian army. The bulk of the force had been decimated with the initial onslaught, and the Greeks suffered fewer losses than their enemy. Now, their blood sings for vengeance, exhaustion forgotten in favor of destroying those that thought to claim their country.

Will has forgone his helmet, a bright grin at Hannibal when the other had looked askance, and then similarly discarded his own. The hounds press up against them, panting and dribbling bloody drool to the mud, and then go ahead of them by Will’s command and Hannibal's warm reassurance. For as long as they can, Will and Hannibal hold their hands clasped together, fingers twined and palms holding slick between. Until the advance speeds. Until their hearts fill with the howl of the Neuri people once more.

"Fight hard, general," Will smiles, words soft and fond, and so gentle. He brings Hannibal's hand to his lips and presses a harsh, hard kiss against battered knuckles. "I will find you in the field."

Hannibal splays his fingers across Will’s cheek and drags him up to meet his mouth, lips closed tight together. For a moment, they are on the farm, tending the horses and hounds, plucking olives in the orchard, listening to the sea wash against the shore. He breaks their kiss reluctantly, and though the illusion falls away the smile remains.

“Soon,” Hannibal promises.

And fleet-footed, they join the men surging around them to reclaim Plataea. Spirits restored by watching the Persians flee, the Greeks kill and fall in turn. Struck by arrows from Persians at great distance, overwhelming those upon the ground. They are driven as only those who have seen their homes destroyed can be, knowing all that awaits them in loss is an honorless death or slavery. They fight as desperate men, weapons striking armor with all the clatter and crackle of flame.

“Watch for the cavalry!” Hannibal shouts, to ground the men in their joyous lust for victory. The Persians have not given all to eliminate the Greeks in their seeming retreat, there is still a considerable military outpost ahead, and with their backs against the sea, the Persians will fight just as desperately.

His words are prescient, and Hannibal tugs Yelp to his side as the familiar thunder of hooves builds beneath their feet. Would that the stubborn Greeks had heeded Hannibal’s praises of fighting atop horseback, but their horses would not have been strong enough to hold such heavy armored troops for so long. It would have made them slow.

If he had more time to build his own stocks.

If he had the respect of others who might have helped.

Hannibal shakes his head. What might have been does not matter. What matters is now.

He gives the order for the men to tighten their phalanxes and ready their spears. Yelp is all but twined between Hannibal’s legs, too tall to manage it, and not from fear but from knowing all too well the feel of a hoof against his tail.

“Clever boy,” Hannibal praises him, as he makes towards the treeline.

Will follows only because he is swept up with the wave of Greeks to follow. He would forgo his shield if he had not been taught, drilled, reminded, _shown_ , that a shield is always a superior weapon even when you have lost your other. That with it you can protect yourself and strike, at once. Without it, you are a target for spears and swords and nothing to stop it but your own skill.

Will saves his strength, returned miraculously despite his limbs shaking, his entire body spent from even such a short skirmish, and does not strike out with his axe but shoves hard with it. It is enough to have men fall, enough to barrel through them and leave any behind him seeking a kill to take it as they may. Beside him, Snow runs crouched, behind his shield with him. 

He can hear the cavalry, can hear the familiar hesitation in the horses when they find themselves met with an obstacle they cannot cross, though they ride on regardless. Are made to. Will breaks rank, finds several of the men beside him following suit and whistles for Snow. These horses are taller than theirs at home, enough so that Snow can run beneath them and snap at their feet, enough so that they spook and rear, enough for the Greeks to pull them from their advantage.

The army regroups, both theirs and the Persians that remain, both counting their losses, commanders calling in all languages for the ranks to join once more, for another push, for a hold, for anything that might work.

Will hears the arrow before he sees it, and feels it before he realizes it has struck him. A sharp, burning pain at his side that pulls Will’s voice from him in a harsh scream. He falls, immediately brings his shield up before him and presses his shoulder against it to hold it up. It will do little once he is circled, but at least more arrows cannot strike him where he sits. He calls for Snow when whistling proves impossible, lips drawn back in pain, not soft enough to funnel for a sound.

“Home,” Will tells him, jerks his hand to give the command grounding and watches the dog reluctantly speed towards the trees. He will not have him a sitting target on the ground when all he himself needs is the conviction to snap the arrow and pull it free. Around him, Greeks and Persians fight. Arrows and swords, snapped spears and heavy shields. Cries and howls and calls for aid all mingling in a whirlwind of noise that is enough to blank Will’s mind.

He grits his teeth.

He sets his axe to the ground and grips the feathered end of the arrow in both hands to snap.

Horses fall screaming alongside men as cavalry collides with phalanx. Spears driven into long graceful throats, hooves cracking apart armor and bone alike. And as if by miracle, the phalanxes reform, as living men take the place of the dead and stalk forward as if one great moving beast made of impenetrable hide, shields as scales and spears like spines. It is a remarkable thing, and Hannibal watches for just a breath long enough to ensure that all are doing as they should - that the Athenians and their brethren have not broken the line - before he turns back.

A skirmisher, _ekdromos_ they call him, he breaks with several others from the formation of hoplites and ducking javelin and arrow, makes his way fast and irregular across the land, through the trees, inward to collide with the Persians seeking to flank. Yelp bounds at his side, as swept away by the thrill of the fight as he is determined to stay to Hannibal's side and protect him.

The company is welcome, especially as Yelp lets out a wheeze that finds Hannibal staggering beneath a blow, caught against his sword.

He watches, blinking slow, as the weapon cracks along its length like lightning.

Time forgoes all rules, in battle. It slows in moments of dire panic, speeds when that panic turns to determination. Starts and stops. A slash of a blade in the blink of an eye, and hours, it seems, to take a breath and hold it. 

Hannibal does. And then he lets it go.

Over and over the blows come, and over and over Hannibal parries with his shield, broken weapon discarded, voice pulling from him in a growl entirely inhuman.

He imagines the farm.

He imagines these soldiers on his fields as they are on these. Destroying his crops, massacring his horses, his goats, the dogs.

Asherah.

Over and over his weapon falls, over mangled flesh and delicate organs, over splintered bone and bubbled breath. He cannot hear the voices in the battle around him, can see nothing but the red mess beneath his feet.

And then a yelp, high, pained, pulls Hannibal’s concentration away entirely, to the dog at his side, who lifts bright eyes to him, unharmed. And then time slows, again, in cruelty, as Hannibal seeks the other animal in battle with them and the boy he is protecting. Snow’s white fur is dark with dirt and gore but still bright enough that Hannibal can see him lunge at the throat of a Persian, to protect Will whose cry Hannibal cannot hear, but he can see. At distance, he sees him throw something aside and rise unsteady.

Hannibal thanks the gods with a breath that Will is still standing, but the words to thank them on his own behalf are knocked from him as a shield collides with his skull and the world spins.

The soil beneath his cheek is soft, the other side of his face wet, suddenly, and vision blurred scarlet. Hannibal turns to his back and the sky spins, and only instinct brings his shield shaking above him to stop the spear aimed for his throat. In the darkness beneath it, he hears Yelp’s snarl and a foreign shout. In the darkness, Hannibal tries to shout for Yelp to go home, to go to Will.

His stupid, brave dog has never listened. Why should he now?

Hannibal would laugh for it if he could draw the breath to do so. If he did not hear a pained squeal and feel soft fur collapse against his side. If his shield were not ripped from his arm and cast aside.

He thinks of Asherah.

He thinks of their farm.

He thinks of Will.

Hannibal gathers Yelp against him, and lets his mind ease to the memory of a sweet laugh and gentle hands, a bold toss of dark curls and bright blue eyes…

Will blinks, rapidly, to clear his vision and shakes his head. The pain is numbing, blinding, but enough to spur him to stand again, to take up his axe to swing at the first man who seeks to take advantage of his wound.

He falls like many others, Will shoving a foot against his neck to work his axe free of him before moving on. Snow limps beside him, cut but otherwise unharmed, panting heavily. Will does not know how much time has passed, how long he was behind his shield. There are few men on the field, now, but further on, towards the sea, he hears the cries of battle, hears the screams of horses and the clash of metal and bone.

Around him, there is movement, some limbs twitching, others seeking, voice whispered and hoarse in many languages, begging for help, thanking the gods for honor, wishing for home. Will swallows, flexes his fingers, sticky with blood, over the handle of his axe and moves slowly further into the field. His instincts scream to join the fray, to make that final stand with his brothers against the enemy, but he is tired. He trembles and he bleeds, his legs barely holding him, and so he walks instead. He walks onwards towards the trees and the sea, because Hannibal will be there, victorious and grinning, strong, still, despite his wounds, strong enough to pull Will close and kiss him raw and welcome him home.

Will stumbles, scrambles back up, drops his shield but keeps his axe. Snow does not leave him, despite Will’s insistence he go, despite the whistles and clicking of his fingers and sharp pointing to get the dog to move. He does not, so Will stops forcing him to.

Around them, the field has grown into a mudbank of blood and bile, splintered weapons and foreign armor, and Will forces himself to walk through it, to not look but to go on. Because Hannibal will be there. Because he would not forgo the last stand for something as petty as an arrow.

Will rouses from his state of drowsiness only when Snow whines, and turns to find the dog far behind him, digging against something in the dirt, nuzzling beneath it, whimpering his distress. For a moment, Will stands still, for a moment he does little more than turn to look ahead again.

Because Hannibal will be there.

He will be there.

With animals scarred beautiful into his skin.

With his long braid and broad shoulders.

With parted lips that promise that he will only ever call Will his beloved.

He is there.

Will sees him, covered in dark fur as when they laid together by the fire, slick with mud, but the crimson paint that Will touched across his cheeks has smudged. There is too much of it, he hadn’t just slathered it on him, he was careful, and now it covers the man and the fur that isn’t a pelt at all because it’s too thick.

Will only realizes he’s stopped breathing when the ground undulates beneath him.

At first, he cannot manage a whistle, no air, no strength behind it, but then he tries again, sharper still a third time.

“Yelp!” Will’s voice rings over the field, breath hitching as Snow just keeps nuzzling, and neither Hannibal nor the fur atop him move. Will swallows, he tries, he can’t, so he moves instead. Stumbling back towards his dogs, towards his husband, axes dropped and forgotten amidst the bodies he passes.

“Stupid boy, hey,” Will whispers, shoving away a soldier half-fallen onto the large animal, dropping to his knees in the reeking mud, uncaring. “Hey, come on,” Will’s words are barely voiced, barely heard as he draws a hand through Yelp’s fur and clutches it between his fingers. “My brave, stupid boy, we’re going home,” Will breathes, shoulders shaking as he brings a wrist up against his nose and trembles, watching his vision blur in and out before he blinks and turns to the man beneath the dog instead.

“We’re going home,” Will repeats, leaning in to press a palm against Hannibal’s breaded cheek, thumb gentle beneath his eye. “We can pick the figs that line the path down to the farm,” he whispers. “They will be so heavy, now, purple and ripe. And we, and -” Will shifts closer, tears streaking his face and smearing the ink against it. 

“Beli will be so big,” Will tells him, and his voice breaks, hitching as he tries to breathe, as he tries to tell him, remind him, fulfil the promise they made each other. “He will be so tall, such a stubborn and graceful horse. And we will train him to the saddle together, we’ll -” The sobs pull at Will entirely, tugging his entire body tense as he presses his forehead to Hannibal’s and weeps against him, loud and childish, muscles taut from shaking as he presses his lips to Hannibal’s over and over, wraps his arms beneath his head and holds him close.

“Hannibal, we have to go,” he wails, pressing himself so hard to the man his arms ache from it, uncaring for the blood that spills from his side, uncaring for anyone who hears, uncaring for the dog that comes, now, to nuzzle his hair and lay against his other side to warm him as Will continues to shake. “We have to go home,” Will sobs.

He’s shaking so hard he can hardly grasp the leather straps of Hannibal’s armor, dropping it again and again as he works his cuirass free. The front part peels free and he slips it aside, as if doing so might help Hannibal breathe. Cheek wet with tears and blood and dirt, Will rubs his face against Hannibal’s chest and sighs warmth to his skin. Trembling fingers trace the bridge of Hannibal’s nose, glide past the gash that opened his throat, follow the patterns of animals and all their stories that Will knows as if they were his own.

He begs the gods, and they do not listen. They do not stir man or dog from the earth, and so in desolation Will does not stir himself. Snow huffs against his brother, nosing him with a whine, and Will’s voice cracks as it tears itself free.

By the time he is found hours later, it is by accident. Those soldiers left to check the field for wounded see first the dogs, and on approach, take Will for dead until they see him curl a little closer to his general, shoulders shaking.

Will jerks from the sensation of warm hands against his shoulders, from the gentleness of the touch that feels so much like Hannibal’s that it makes him shudder, a hoarse sob pressed to the man’s cold skin.

“No.” It’s barely heard, and Will turns his head against his husband when he is coaxed to move again. Beside him, against his legs, he feels Snow’s growl before he even hears it, animalistic, feral, and he hears the men around him curse softly before stepping back. All but the man touching him, relentless in his determination to have Will move.

“Will.” He recognizes the voice, usually heavy with laughter and drink, at Hannibal’s table with his friends. He seeks in his memory for a face but finds nothing but grey, softly undulating shades of it, like the storm clouds above them. Will breathes out again and it’s uneven, shivering through his lips and pulling another soft wail with it.

“Will, you must stand.”

Will’s body begins to tremble again, a newfound energy to, even though he thinks he will never move again. Beneath him, there is no life, there is no breath, no soft hands to cup his face, no smile on those lips that part to call him peacemaker. Will draws another sob and holds his breath.

“No,” he says again.

The man crouches, lifting a hand as if to ease Snow to quiet. He reaches out and grasps the dog’s muzzle, and knowing a friend, Snow laps at his fingers. The others wait, their own expressions held in a valley between the loss of brothers and the victory for their country, and though the field will be cleared of the Grecian dead, they will not leave their general in the mire. Loyal, even now.

Especially now.

“He fought well. He died well,” the man says to Will, setting his hand to Will’s shoulder once more but not moving it, not touching more than that. “And we will bring you both back. All of you. But you have to stand.” A pause, and the man breathes a sound that might have been a laugh if it weren’t so far from joy. “Your hound will have my hand if I leave you, and my throat if I let you bleed out.”

Will curls tighter and the man looks to the others, who look away.

“We’ve got to bring you all home.”

Will swallows, a long moment of quiet before he pushes himself up. Not to stand, not even to sit, but to look down on Hannibal again, to the marks on his skin, his own handprint against Hannibal’s chest, still so small, always so small against him.

“I told him I would find him in the field,” Will whispers, bringing a trembling hand to his face to wipe the spit and mucus from his lips.

“You found him.”

“I didn’t,” Will tells him softly, swallowing, the shame of that, the pain, enough to push hot tears down his face again that he doesn’t bother to wipe away. “Snow found them. He found his brother. And I walked past my husband, unseeing, until he did.”

The horror of that, the disgust in himself, is enough to have Will draw his knees up, gasping pain as the wound at his side pulls again. He does not let go of Hannibal, hand still against him, clutched in his clothes, pressing to his skin. Will’s eyelids flicker and more tears slip from beneath them.

“I have not honored him.”

The soldier rises from his crouch. He holds his breath, and speaks so boldly that his words sink leaden in Will’s belly. A voice he knows this soldier learned to use. A voice Will knows as Hannibal’s own.

“Did you fight?” Will does not answer, and so the soldier asks again. “Tell me, did you fight?”

“Yes,” Will breathes through gritted teeth.

“And you lived,” the man says. “And there is no dishonor in that. He has found a different kind, now, but you - you knew him best. And you know that he would die a thousand deaths rather than see you gone before your time.” He ducks his head, and says, softer, “You will honor him now with memory, and the funeral he has earned. And he will live in you.”

Will makes no sound as he cries, as he turns his head to look at Hannibal where he was slain. Strong, brave, beautiful always. He would not want Will to succumb to cold and death, not here. Not when they had fought so hard to keep their home safe, and now at least one of them can return to it.

It takes a long time for Will to bend forward and press a kiss to Hannibal’s forehead, lingering and long, to press his forehead there after, sighing against the man’s face, nosing softly against him.

“I love you,” he whispers, Neuri warm against his lips where they had grown cold. “I will find you again, general.”

He is not denied his right to help carry Hannibal, though Will can barely walk himself. He is grateful when the soldier who roused him bends to take Yelp into his arms to carry with them. Snow limps alongside Will, leaning against him when he can, tongue lolling from exhaustion and dehydration.

No one speaks, too tired, too heartbroken from their losses to bother. Will wants to help with gathering their dead, but is told gently to sit down, to lie down, to rest as someone tends to him. He falls asleep before anyone comes, and rouses only when the soldier shakes him gently to wake him for the pyres.

There are two, Will realizes, blinking into the heat that waters his eyes. Snow pads at his side, and Will looks from the fire stacked enormous with fallen men and harvested trees, to the smaller of the two. He wraps Hannibal’s chlamys tighter around his shoulders, this left for him along with Hannibal’s armor. The crimson fabric hides the wound in Will’s side, spilling weaker now across his fingers, and with careful steps he makes his way to where Hannibal lays waiting, with Yelp alongside.

A savage sound rips itself from a place that Will thought empty, devoid of strength, and he wonders how Hannibal carried such weight in him for the whole of his life and still stood so tall. His legs hardly hold him, and though his vision greys, Hannibal appears luminous, cleaned and lit golden by fire. Will waits for him to stir, to drag an arm across his eyes and turn a sleepy smile towards him. He waits to hear the rough voice that will bid him come closer and lay beside. He waits, and the moment never comes.

A shudder drags Will forward as the men start to lift the pallet on which Hannibal rests, and clinging his cloak close with one hand, Will lifts the other to stroke Hannibal’s hair from his face. He whispers to him in Neuri, words that the men around do not understand, but neither do they move as Will touches fluttering kisses to fire-warmed skin, to closed eyes, to unmoving lips. _Now_ , Will tells him, _awaken now, return to me, now, erastes, now…_

He is too weak to make more tears for him, and without calloused fingers to sweep them away, Will does not want to feel them wet his cheeks.

So he steps back, and back. Enough to press his shoulder to a supple little tree, and sink down to the ground against it. The cloak he pulls around himself tighter, breathing in the last of Hannibal’s smell, letting it soothe him as he grows dizzy and shivers, wound unseen to in the chaos of collecting the dead. He hardly cares, it doesn’t hurt anymore.

He watches the pallet laid, the fire set. He does not look away as the entirety of it is engulfed in flames, roaring in their hunger. He thinks of the fire Hannibal had built for them, how high that had gone as they painted their faces and danced around it, howling for the moon. He thinks of early mornings on the farm, pressing close to Hannibal’s heavy, sleeping form and smiling when he mumbled in his sleep, always in Neuri. He thinks of the winters, the farm lashed with rain as they secured the horses and goats inside the barn, the dogs in the kennel. He thinks of the day the pups were born, he thinks of how they grew, and how long Hannibal resisted Yelp’s affection for him before he took him up to hold, in a little sling made of his cloak, then under the dog’s lanky limbs to carry him around the house.

The fire burns bright and the smoke melds seamlessly with the darkening sky above them, souls given to the Gods, honored, as they all deserved.

Will doesn’t watch, after that, too tired and too cold to do more than huddle up and duck his head and close his eyes against Hannibal’s smell. His heart beats slower, and his mind is at peace. He feels Snow nuzzle him with a gentle whine and sighs to him that he just needs to rest. Just needs to sleep.

And only then does it start to rain.

When the sky clears, it is the sun that wakes him. Not so bright as to blind, but warm, incredibly warm, as if he had fallen asleep beside the fireplace. Dragging an arm across his face, Hannibal stirs from the bed of long grass beneath him. The field seems to span in every direction, surrounded by woods that seem all at once very close and very far away. In the distance, high upon hills insurmountably tall and softly rolling, there are great halls built beautifully of wood, ornately carved and majestic.

He has hardly managed to push his palms to the ground and sit before a huge furry form barrels him backwards again. Yelp clambers over him like an overgrown puppy, wheezing against his cheek and nuzzling his throat, licking broad swipes across his skin.

Hannibal’s throat tightens when he swallows, and he brings a hand to it, sighing simply to feel his breath move whole from chest to mouth. He recalls from a lifetime ago the desperate snarling of the dog that now lays a heavy head on his chest, tail thumping against Hannibal’s legs. He recalls soft kisses touched to his brow, his eyelids, his lips.

He knows.

And he can do no more than rest a hand to Yelp’s head and murmur into his ear.

“Brave, stupid dog.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...did you think we would just leave them there? Book 5 of the series, Aionios, posts next Sunday!
> 
> We wanted to say a huge, huge thank you to everyone who has stuck with us throughout this series (so far!) it has meant so much to us both that people enjoy the work and trust us enough to take you on a journey like this with our boys. We are so happy with this ending, and we really hope that if you are not, you will allow us to justify it for you in the next book.
> 
> Also, the [Hannibal Blog Awards](http://hannibalblogawards.tumblr.com/) are holding their nomination round right now, and if you would like to give a shoutout to wwhiskeyandbloodd (our joint blog on tumblr) for best fanfic it would mean a lot to us!

**Author's Note:**

>  **Ekdosis** : “giving forth”: the ceremony at which the kurios of a betrothed bride gave her into the hand of her new husband. (Or when one husband chooses the other, in our case :))


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